“I must play the game by the rules of the society in which I am compelled to live. You can stand on the summit of human things, on ice peaks, and still have feelings; I should freeze there. The life of the greatest number, of which I am very frankly one, is made up of emotions such as I feel at present in need of. The most popular lady’s man often flirts with ten women at once, and wins the favor of none; and then, whatever his gifts, his practice, his knowledge of the world, a crisis may arise when he finds himself, as it were, jammed between two doors. For my part, I like the quiet and faithful intercourse of home; I want the life where a man always finds a woman at his side.”
“Marriage is a little free and easy!” cried de Marsay.
Paul was not to be dashed, and went on:
“Laugh if you please; I shall be the happiest man in the world when my servant comes to say, ‘Madame is waiting breakfast’—when, on coming home in the afternoon, I may find a heart—”
“You are still too frivolous, Paul! You are not moral enough yet for married life!”
“A heart to which I may confide my business and tell my secrets. I want to live with some being on terms of such intimacy that our affection may not depend on a Yes or No, or on situations where the most engaging man may disappoint passion. In short, I am bold enough to become, as you say, a good husband and a good father! I am suited to domestic happiness, and prepared to submit to the conditions insisted on by society to set up a wife, a family—”
“You suggest the idea of a beehive.—Go ahead, then. You will be a dupe all your days. You mean to marry, to have a wife to yourself? In other words, you want to solve, to your own advantage, the most difficult social problem presented in our day by town life as the French Revolution has left it, so you begin by isolation! And do you suppose that your wife will be content to forego the life you contemn? Will she, like you, be disgusted with it? If you do not want to endure the conjugal joys described by your sincere friend de Marsay, listen to my last advice. Remain unmarried for thirteen years longer, and enjoy yourself to the top of your bent; then, at forty, with your first fit of the gout, marry a widow of six-and-thirty; thus you may be happy. If you take a maid to wife, you will die a madman!”
“Indeed! And tell me why?” cried Paul, somewhat nettled.
“My dear fellow,” replied de Marsay, “Boileau’s Satire on Women is no more than a series of commonplace observations in verse. Why should women be faultless? Why deny them the heritage of the most obvious possession of human nature? In my opinion, the problem of marriage no longer lies in the form in which that critic discerned it. Do you really suppose that, to command affection in marriage, as in love, it is enough for a husband to be a man? You who haunt boudoirs, have you none but fortunate experiences?
“Everything in our bachelor existence prepares a disastrous mistake for the man who marries without having deeply studied the human heart. In the golden days of youth, by a singular fact in our manners, a man always bestows pleasure, he triumphs over fascinated woman, and she submits to his wishes. The obstacles set up by law and feeling, and the natural coyness of woman, give rise to a common impulse on both sides, which deludes superficial men as to their future position in the married state where there are no obstacles to be overcome, where women endure rather than allow a man’s advances, and repel them rather than invite them. The whole aspect of life is altered for us. The unmarried man, free from care, and always the leader, has nothing to fear from a defeat. In married life a repulse is irreparable. Though a lover may make a mistress change her mind in his favor, such a rout, my dear boy, is Waterloo to a husband. A husband, like Napoleon, is bound to gain the victory; however often he may have won, the first defeat is his overthrow. The woman who is flattered by a lover’s persistency, and proud of his wrath, calls them brutal in a husband. The lover may choose his ground and do what he will, the master has no such license, and his battlefield is always the same.
“Again, the struggle is the other way about. A wife is naturally inclined to refuse what she ought; a mistress is ready to give what she ought not.
“You who wish to marry (and who will do it), have you ever duly meditated on the Civil Code? I have never soiled my feet in that cave of commentary, that cockloft of gabble called the Law Schools; I never looked into the Code, but I see how it works in the living organism of the world. I am a lawyer, as a clinical professor is a doctor. The malady is not in books, it is in the patient.—The Code, my friend, provides women with guardians, treats them as minors, as children. And how do we manage children? By fear. In that word, my dear Paul, you have the bit for the steed.—Feel your pulse, and say: Can you disguise yourself as a tyrant; you who are so gentle, so friendly, so trusting; you whom at first I used to laugh at, and whom I
