The Marriage Contract | Page 5

and my secrets. I wish to
live in such close union with a woman that our affection shall not
depend upon a yes or a no, or be open to the disillusions of love. In

short, I have the necessary courage to become, as you say, a worthy
husband and father. I feel myself fitted for family joys; I wish to put
myself under the conditions prescribed by society; I desire to have a
wife and children."
"You remind me of a hive of honey-bees! But go your way, you'll be a
dupe all your life. Ha, ha! you wish to marry to have a wife! In other
words, you wish to solve satisfactorily to your own profit the most
difficult problem invented by those bourgeois morals which were
created by the French Revolution; and, what is more, you mean to
begin your attempt by a life of retirement. Do you think your wife
won't crave the life you say you despise? Will she be disgusted with it,
as you are? If you won't accept the noble conjugality just formulated
for your benefit by your friend de Marsay, listen, at any rate, to his final
advice. Remain a bachelor for the next thirteen years; amuse yourself
like a lost soul; then, at forty, on your first attack of gout, marry a
widow of thirty-six. Then you may possibly be happy. If you now take
a young girl to wife, you'll die a madman."
"Ah ca! tell me why!" cried Paul, somewhat piqued.
"My dear fellow," replied de Marsay, "Boileau's satire against women
is a tissue of poetical commonplaces. Why shouldn't women have
defects? Why condemn them for having the most obvious thing in
human nature? To my mind, the problem of marriage is not at all at the
point where Boileau puts it. Do you suppose that marriage is the same
thing as love, and that being a man suffices to make a wife love you?
Have you gathered nothing in your boudoir experience but pleasant
memories? I tell you that everything in our bachelor life leads to fatal
errors in the married man unless he is a profound observer of the
human heart. In the happy days of his youth a man, by the caprice of
our customs, is always lucky; he triumphs over women who are all
ready to be triumphed over and who obey their own desires. One thing
after another--the obstacles created by the laws, the sentiments and
natural defences of women--all engender a mutuality of sensations
which deceives superficial persons as to their future relations in
marriage, where obstacles no longer exist, where the wife submits to

love instead of permitting it, and frequently repulses pleasure instead of
desiring it. Then, the whole aspect of a man's life changes. The
bachelor, who is free and without a care, need never fear repulsion; in
marriage, repulsion is almost certain and irreparable. It may be possible
for a lover to make a woman reverse an unfavorable decision, but such
a change, my dear Paul, is the Waterloo of husbands. Like Napoleon,
the husband is thenceforth condemned to victories which, in spite of
their number, do not prevent the first defeat from crushing him. The
woman, so flattered by the perseverance, so delighted with the ardor of
a lover, calls the same things brutality in a husband. You, who talk of
marrying, and who will marry, have you ever meditated on the Civil
Code? I myself have never muddied my feet in that hovel of
commentators, that garret of gossip, called the Law-school. I have
never so much as opened the Code; but I see its application on the
vitals of society. The Code, my dear Paul, makes woman a ward; it
considers her a child, a minor. Now how must we govern children? By
fear. In that one word, Paul, is the curb of the beast. Now, feel your
own pulse! Have you the strength to play the tyrant,--you, so gentle, so
kind a friend, so confiding; you, at whom I have laughed, but whom I
love, and love enough to reveal to you my science? For this is science.
Yes, it proceeds from a science which the Germans are already calling
Anthropology. Ah! if I had not already solved the mystery of life by
pleasure, if I had not a profound antipathy for those who think instead
of act, if I did not despise the ninnies who are silly enough to believe in
the truth of a book, when the sands of the African deserts are made of
the ashes of I know not how many unknown and pulverized Londons,
Romes, Venices, and Parises, I would write a book on modern
marriages made under the influence of the Christian system, and I'd
stick a lantern on that heap