This is a life apart. Not the daily round of appearances—the mere mask which hides life—but life immediate, naked, real. You see here that in spite of all it is possible to be merry and to care for nothing. Here are no unsightly garments, no clumsy inartistic motions; no children (that most objectionable element in life!); no “respectable” women, who are to be recognized by their ugliness, their want of style and charm, their tediousness and stupidity, and the fact that, when they think at all, they are always hopelessly depressed. This is a very good illustration of the “Law of Selection”: in marriage, the qualities of virtue and fidelity are of more account as guarantees of felicity than such endowments as beauty and health. Beautiful women of a lively temperament are set aside as too knowing, too exacting, and of doubtful trustworthiness: and so they go to swell the ranks of the fallen.
For my own part, did I not fear the accusation of antisocial tendencies, I would, from the height of my cheerless philosophical eminence, declare that I view the “frail sisterhood,” as an institution, without intolerance. Therein breathes something that tells of times gone by: something existing, but of which men do not speak. There exist human beings, scorned as a class, whatever their personal endowments may be, with whom no other class is allowed to come in contact, under pain of defilement:—not unlike pariahs. These beings are to be bartered for precious metals by means of a secret contract—bought as the slaves of ancient times were bought. Their existence is kept a secret quite disinterestedly, for the mere sake of the secret itself: everyone knows all about them. In our days, so hyper-civilized, so deprived of all poetry by reason of excessive culture, this is a most astonishing state of things.
Nearly every man here present has a wife, actual or intended: but these are not permitted to enter: they would be by far too much out of place.
No doubt, their wives, having put the children to bed, had some words with the servant over the daily account of money spent, and put on a clean nightgown (of a wretchedly bad cut, by the way), say their prayers and lay themselves down to sleep under the red woolen coverlet, thinking all the time: “How late he always returns after these meetings!” or else she may bite her nails with fury, revolving in her mind the idea of another angry scene with her husband—a scene foredoomed as heretofore to be without effect. Or again, in agonized resignation, she may bend over the baby’s cradle, and murmur mournfully, with naive pathos: “For your sake, my child!” And the girls whose troths are plighted have long ago gone to sleep under the wing of their domestic guardians, lulled to slumber with some such sweet fancies as: “Most men have intrigues before they marry: he, and he alone, has surely none.” And so forth. …
They are foolish—but fortunate, because not allowed to come in here.
Ah! once upon a time, in the days of my childish marvellings, how bitterly did I weep over all these things!
“Stephen, how late is it?” I asked Wiazewski.
“It will soon be midnight. Our friends are not coming, it would seem. Are you in a hurry to get home?”
“I never am; I have got a latchkey, and so wake nobody when I come in. But are you not yourself sometimes engaged of an evening?”
He shook his head, his teeth shining good-humouredly in a friendly smile.
“You know perfectly well that there is not an assignation I would not set aside to spend an evening with you. To me, friendship is a boon far rarer and far more precious than love.”
“I do not hold with you at all. I have enough of the cold consideration granted me by the world.”
Stephen smiled again.
“There is no help for it, Janka,” he said. “Men of our times are too weakly to love an all-around woman: the very thought of one gives them an unpleasant shock. The day for types of women so extremely complex as you are has now gone by; at present women are preferred who display some very distinct and special characteristic: especially either primitive natures, or such as have been depraved by civilization; or types of spirituality or of sensuality; women either of very well-balanced minds, or nervous even to hysteria; or, again, those in whom warmth of heart or a distinguished bearing prevails. And that is why the monogamic instinct is now dying out completely: in a few years’ time, it will be no more.”
Wiazewski was on the warpath, the topic being a favourite one of his.
“For how can a man be true to his wife, if he takes her ‘for better, for worse, … till death do them part,’ only, let us say, to kiss a mole that she has on her neck, just under her left ear? Monogamy requires exceedingly strong, rich, abundant natures.”
“Then it would follow that our near future would witness our return to the hetairism of primaeval times?”
“No doubt; for both the primitive instincts of the senses, and their ultra-refined activity, have identically the same result.”
A handsome woman, with strikingly original features, accompanied by an elderly man, clean-shaven (an actor probably) went by near our table. She too had the look of an actress.
Wiazewski’s eyes followed her with keen scrutiny.
“A fine woman,” I remarked.
He turned his eyes away from her.
“She is not my sort,” he replied. “Far too cultured for my taste.”
Then he again returned to the subject.
“Hetairism,
