The Physiology of Marriage, part 2 | Page 4

him the three banknotes, "I see now that it is a piece of folly--"
"What do you mean?" answered he, "keep your money."
"But, my love, I am ruining you! I ought to know that you love me so much, that I ought not to tell you all that I wish for."
"Keep it, my darling, it is your lawful property--nonsense, I shall gamble this winter and get all that back again!"
"Gamble!" cried she, with an expression of horror. "Alexander, take back these notes! Come, sir, I wish you to do so."
"No, no," replied my friend, repulsing the white and delicious little hand. "Are you not going on Thursday to a ball of Madame de B-----?"
"I will think about what you asked of me," said I to my comrade.
I went away bowing to his wife, but I saw plainly after that scene that my anacreontic salutation did not produce much effect upon her.
"He must be mad," thought I as I went away, "to talk of a thousand crowns to a law student."
Five days later I found myself at the house of Madame de B-----, whose balls were becoming fashionable. In the midst of the quadrilles I saw the wife of my friend and that of the mathematician. Madame Alexander wore a charming dress; some flowers and white muslin were all that composed it. She wore a little cross /a la Jeannette/, hanging by a black velvet ribbon which set off the whiteness of her scented skin; long pears of gold decorated her ears. On the neck of Madame the Professoress sparkled a superb cross of diamonds.
"How funny that is," said I to a personage who had not yet studied the world's ledger, nor deciphered the heart of a single woman.
That personage was myself. If I had then the desire to dance with those fair women, it was simply because I knew a secret which emboldened my timidity.
"So after all, madame, you have your cross?" I said to her first.
"Well, I fairly won it!" she replied, with a smile hard to describe.
"How is this! no ear-rings?" I remarked to the wife of my friend.
"Ah!" she replied, "I have enjoyed possession of them during a whole luncheon time, but you see that I have ended by converting Alexander."
"He allowed himself to be easily convinced?"
She answered with a look of triumph.
Eight years afterwards, this scene suddenly rose to my memory, though I had long since forgotten it, and in the light of the candles I distinctly discerned the moral of it. Yes, a woman has a horror of being convinced of anything; when you try to persuade her she immediately submits to being led astray and continues to play the role which nature gave her. In her view, to allow herself to be won over is to grant a favor, but exact arguments irritate and confound her; in order to guide her you must employ the power which she herself so frequently employs and which lies in an appeal to sensibility. It is therefore in his wife, and not in himself, that a husband can find the instruments of his despotism; as diamond cuts diamond so must the woman be made to tyrannize over herself. To know how to offer the ear- rings in such a way that they will be returned, is a secret whose application embraces the slightest details of life. And now let us pass to the second observation.
"He who can manage property of one toman, can manage one of an hundred thousand," says an Indian proverb; and I, for my part, will enlarge upon this Asiatic adage and declare, that he who can govern one woman can govern a nation, and indeed there is very much similarity between these two governments. Must not the policy of husbands be very nearly the same as the policy of kings? Do not we see kings trying to amuse the people in order to deprive them of their liberty; throwing food at their heads for one day, in order to make them forget the misery of a whole year; preaching to them not to steal and at the same time stripping them of everything; and saying to them: "It seems to me that if I were the people I should be virtuous"? It is from England that we obtain the precedent which husbands should adopt in their houses. Those who have eyes ought to see that when the government is running smoothly the Whigs are rarely in power. A long Tory ministry has always succeeded an ephemeral Liberal cabinet. The orators of a national party resemble the rats which wear their teeth away in gnawing the rotten panel; they close up the hole as soon as they smell the nuts and the lard locked up in the royal cupboard. The woman is the Whig of our