love.'
'But if he loves too ardently he will not be content with conjugal pleasures.'
'Ah! — there you make a mistake, — a great mistake, my dear nephew.
A man who plays the part of a Don Juan, without being able to fix his mind anywhere, is not a true lover. He is generally a neuropath. And if he finds excitement in novelties, it is through a necessity to restore a punctured erotism which is periodically becoming deflated.'
'It may also be through eclecticism.'
'Eclecticism? That of hotel-porters, who jabber several living languages, without having had the time to fathom a single one. Have you noticed that the most profound writers-a Mauriac, for instance-are men of the soil, faithful to the self-same landscape?
And people with veritable amorous temperaments are also to be measured by their fidelity. Instead of repeating the same little experiments with easy little women, they prefer the great adventure of a total love- affair.'
'On condition that, in marriage, they find a partner worthy of the adventure.'
'Obviously! That's a question of initial choice. I don't insist on it, since you appear to have solved the problem sufficiently well. However, I must admit it is a delicate one and hazardous as regards its solution.
But, above all, it appears to me to be badly set, because one affects to ignore its sexual side. One is floundering about in a sea of hypocrisy.
And when one comes to realize that there's a misdeal, — that the couple are decidedly ill-matched, the fiction is continued. People talk about incompatibility of temper, whereas it is clearly evident it's a question of incompatibility of the sexes. A marriage is not a satisfactory one unless sexual harmony reigns. Everything else, you see, is of secondary consideration, — at any rate in the case of those who claim to realize that erotic masterpiece, — 100 % conjugal love.'
'That is to say…'
'That is to say marriage containing a big dose of fleshly love. One of those skilfully compounded cocktails containing a slight common basis of intellectual and moral aspirations, a suspicion of equallyshared social prejudices, but the whole most generously moistened with sensuality, and without forgetting a certain flavour of folly.'
'Go a little further and you'll entirely suppress the slight intellectual and moral foundation.'
'Not at all! On the contrary that is essential: it's an indispensable gyroscope with which to preserve the stability of households. But when the hour for desire comes and it is fanned into flame, I would see husband and wife capable of forgetting everything save their passion; I would then have them capable of obeying the wildest suggestions of their senses, — capable of banishing all reticence or shame, amidst the sole preoccupation of diversifying and renewing their voluptuousness.'
'But in that case, what is the difference between a legitimate spouse and the professional vendor of love?'
'The difference? — Why, that existing between passion and venality; between inspirations of desire and actions merely learnt; between true tenderness and vulgarity! Everything which separates a body which has been wholly yours and one which others have polluted, — nay, which they may have contaminated. I delight to plunge into a mountain lake; but it is not without a feeling of repugnance that I do so in a public swimming-bath.'
'By Jove! — what comparisons you do draw.'
'They are literally exact. Between two young married people, really in love with each other, I can picture, without a feeling of disgust, an intimacy of lips and the flesh which, in the case of a prostitute, would sicken me.'
'But there are caresses which a husband cannot accept from his wife.'
'Why so? If, on her part, the tender action is spontaneous and if he cannot reproach himself either with conjugal infidelities or old-time blemishes. Clearly this latter condition is a necessity. Unless we have to do with an unspeakable cad… By the bye, what about your sojourns in the East…?'
'Nothing… I lived there like a monk-a veritable monk, and strictly observant of his rules. As to my behaviour in France, I've had only a couple of liaisons, and most sentimental ones to boot. But I've never touched a prostitute… No, on that score, I'm sure of myself.'
'In that case, my boy, you can, as regards conjugal tendernesses, permit yourself everything, and accept everything.'
'As an objection against that, some people might raise that minimum of deference which a husband owes his wife and which forbids him to take certain liberties.'
'Ah! yes. The great objection of the father-confessors, — 'dignity as regards conjugal love.' What a sinister piece of hypocrisy! How is it that Christian moralists, — those most eloquent champions of fidelity in marriage, — make themselves the grave-diggers of that very virtue?
For that is indeed what they do when they pretend to limit the rites of conjugal love and restrict it to the brevity of a utilitarian act. They would have the nuptial bed as frigid as an operating-table. Yet they know quite well that disappointed love will seek consolation in other, warmer beds;-and that will be the doom of conjugal fidelity. You were speaking just now of the respect due to a married woman; but would it not be inflicting a grave wrong upon her if she were made merely the passive receptacle of a bi-monthly satisfaction? And what a lamentable piece of trickery is that of so many stupidly unfaithful husbands! They abandon their wives in order to purchase their pleasures from prostitutes, without suspecting that a spouse, when awakened to fleshly love, may become an incomparable mistress.
Quite as inventive as the others, but more sincere, more passionate, and healthier.'
'But do you think she would always accept that part as a mistress?
That she would yield to the exigencies of your love at 100 %?'
'Clearly there are redhibitory cases, such as that of a stupid, amorphous woman; or the more delusive case of one who is very beautiful, and so smitten with her own beauty that she fears to blemish it. In all other instances, a woman's adhesion to the rites of love depend entirely on her husband.'
'And what must he do to obtain it?'
'Exactly the opposite of what is usually done.'
'But practically?'
'He must understand that he is not an animal in a state of rut, legally authorized to satisfy himself by raping his wife on the very night of their marriage. A day will perhaps come when the honest man, far from pluming himself on the rapidity of that rape, will make a point of honour in deferring it a little; and that day will inaugurate an era of better understanding in households. Come, my boy, can you imagine what that first night must be like to a virgin? The ridiculous nudity of a hairy man; the brutal revelation of the hugeness of his sex; the repulsive obligation of allowing herself to be ridden; the pain consequent on the act of violation; and the grotesque movements accompanying the man's desire for satisfaction. I am fully aware that many young brides accept these horrors without too great an emotion.
Some have already been instructed while others are endowed by Nature with the treasures of a stupid, bovine indifference. But what happens in the case of an intelligent, sensitive, and truly ingenuous young woman? Either she will no longer accept carnal love save as a degrading job, with the result that her husband will tire of her; or else, retiring within herself, she will meet some charming initiator, who is capable of revealing to her, delicately, the marvels of the senses, — and the husband will be deceived. In both cases there is a dissociation of the household.'
'But, once more, what is one to do?'
'Simply be patient. Know how to enjoy those ineffable pleasures, — the progressive discovery of the various parts of a young woman's body, the awakening of her curiosity as regards the body of the male, and her slow initiation into the mysteries of the flesh. Moreover, these delights should be those of newly married couples, — officially, — and the fact should be patent to everyone.'
'You don't mean it!'
'Certainly I do, my boy. At least if we were living in a better organized world, in which mothers were very intelligent and young men were absolutely straightforward. But in your case…
'Well, exactly, — in my case?'
'The essential thing is to compensate the brevity of the betrothal by secretly prolonging it after marriage.
