The Physiology of Marriage, Part 1, Honoré de Balzac [books to read to get smarter txt] 📗

a modesty which is quite independent of coverings. Conjugal love ought never either to put on or to take away the bandage of its eyes, excepting at the due season.

XLIII. Power does not consist in striking with force or with frequency, but in striking true.

XLIV. To call a desire into being, to nourish it, to develop it, to bring it to full growth, to excite it, to satisfy it, is a complete poem of itself.

XLV. The progression of pleasures is from the distich to the quatrain, from the quatrain to the sonnet, from the sonnet to the ballad, from the ballad to the ode, from the ode to the cantata, from the cantata to the dithyramb. The husband who commences with dithyramb is a fool.

XLVI. Each night ought to have its _menu_.

XLVII. Marriage must incessantly contend with a monster which devours everything, that is, familiarity.

XLVIII. If a man cannot distinguish the difference between the pleasures of two consecutive nights, he has married too early.

XLIX. It is easier to be a lover than a husband, for the same reason that it is more difficult to be witty every day, than to say bright things from time to time.

L. A husband ought never to be the first to go to sleep and the last to awaken.

LI. The man who enters his wife's dressing-room is either a philosopher or an imbecile.

LII. The husband who leaves nothing to desire is a lost man.

LIII. The married woman is a slave whom one must know how to set upon a throne.

LIV. A man must not flatter himself that he knows his wife, and is making her happy unless he sees her often at his knees.

It is to the whole ignorant troop of our predestined, of our legions of snivelers, of smokers, of snuff-takers, of old and captious men that Sterne addressed, in _Tristram Shandy_, the letter written by Walter Shandy to his brother Toby, when this last proposed to marry the widow Wadman.

These celebrated instructions which the most original of English writers has comprised in this letter, suffice with some few exceptions to complete our observations on the manner in which husbands should behave to their wives; and we offer it in its original form to the reflections of the predestined, begging that they will meditate upon it as one of the most solid masterpieces of human wit.

"MY DEAR BROTHER TOBY,

"What I am going to say to thee is upon the nature of women, and of
love-making to them; and perhaps it is as well for thee--tho' not
so well for me--that thou hast occasion for a letter of
instructions upon that head, and that I am able to write it to
thee.

"Had it been the good pleasure of Him who disposes of our lots, and
thou no sufferer by the knowledge, I had been well content that
thou should'st have dipped the pen this moment into the ink
instead of myself; but that not being the case--Mrs. Shandy being
now close beside me, preparing for bed--I have thrown together
without order, and just as they have come into my mind, such hints
and documents as I deem may be of use to thee; intending, in this,
to give thee a token of my love; not doubting, my dear Toby, of
the manner in which it will be accepted.

"In the first place, with regard to all which concerns religion in
the affair--though I perceive from a glow in my cheek, that I
blush as I begin to speak to thee upon the subject, as well
knowing, notwithstanding thy unaffected secrecy, how few of its
offices thou neglectest--yet I would remind thee of one (during
the continuance of thy courtship) in a particular manner, which I
would not have omitted; and that is, never to go forth upon the
enterprise, whether it be in the morning or in the afternoon,
without first recommending thyself to the protection of Almighty
God, that He may defend thee from the evil one.

"Shave the whole top of thy crown clean once at least every four or
five days, but oftener if convenient; lest in taking off thy wig
before her, thro' absence of mind, she should be able to discover
how much has been cut away by Time--how much by Trim.

"'Twere better to keep ideas of baldness out of her fancy.

"Always carry it in thy mind, and act upon it as a sure maxim,
Toby--

"_'That women are timid.'_ And 'tis well they are--else there would
be no dealing with them.

"Let not thy breeches be too tight, or hang too loose about thy
thighs, like the trunk-hose of our ancestors.

"A just medium prevents all conclusions.

"Whatever thou hast to say, be it more or less, forget not to utter
it in a low soft tone of voice. Silence, and whatever approaches
it, weaves dreams of midnight secrecy into the brain: For this
cause, if thou canst help it, never throw down the tongs and
poker.

"Avoid all kinds of pleasantry and facetiousness in thy discourse
with her, and do whatever lies in thy power at the same time, to
keep from her all books and writings which tend there to: there
are some devotional tracts, which if thou canst entice her to
read over, it will be well: but suffer her not to look into
_Rabelais_, or _Scarron_, or _Don Quixote_.

"They are all books which excite laughter; and thou knowest, dear
Toby, that there is no passion so serious as lust.

"Stick a pin in the bosom of thy shirt, before thou enterest her
parlor.

"And if thou art permitted to sit upon the same sofa with her, and
she gives thee occasion to lay thy hand upon hers--beware of
taking it--thou canst not lay thy hand upon hers, but she will
feel the temper of thine. Leave that and as many other things as
thou canst, quite undetermined; by so doing, thou wilt have her
curiosity on thy side; and if she is not conquered by that, and
thy Asse continues still kicking, which there is great reason to
suppose--thou must begin, with first losing a few ounces of blood
below the ears, according to the practice of the ancient
Scythians, who cured the most intemperate fits of the appetite by
that means.

"_Avicenna_, after this, is for having the part anointed with the
syrup of hellebore, using proper evacuations and purges--and I
believe rightly. But thou must eat little or no goat's flesh, nor
red deer--nor even foal's flesh by any means; and carefully
abstain--that is, as much as thou canst,--from peacocks, cranes,
coots, didappers and water-hens.

"As for thy drink--I need not tell thee, it must be the infusion of
Vervain and the herb Hanea, of which Aelian relates such effects;
but if thy stomach palls with it--discontinue it from time to
time, taking cucumbers, melons, purslane, water-lilies, woodbine,
and lettuce, in the stead of them.

"There is nothing further for thee, which occurs to me at present--

"Unless the breaking out of a fresh war.--So wishing everything,
dear Toby, for the best,

"I rest thy affectionate brother,

"WALTER SHANDY."

Under the present circumstances Sterne himself would doubtless have omitted from his letter the passage about the ass; and, far from advising the predestined to be bled he would have changed the regimen of cucumbers and lettuces for one eminently substantial. He recommended the exercise of economy, in order to attain to the power of magic liberality in the moment of war, thus imitating the admirable example of the English government, which in time of peace has two hundred ships in commission, but whose shipwrights can, in time of need, furnish double that quantity when it is desirable to scour the sea and carry off a whole foreign navy.

When a man belongs to the small class of those who by a liberal education have been made masters of the domain of thought, he ought always, before marrying, to examine his physical and moral resources. To contend advantageously with the tempest which so many attractions tend to raise in the heart of his wife, a husband ought to possess, besides the science of pleasure and a fortune which saves him from sinking into any class of the predestined, robust health, exquisite tact, considerable intellect, too much good sense to make his superiority felt, excepting on fit occasions, and finally great acuteness of hearing and sight.

If he has a handsome face, a good figure, a manly air, and yet falls short of all these promises, he will sink into the class of the predestined. On the other hand, a husband who is plain in features but has a face full of expression, will find himself, if his wife once forgets his plainness, in a situation most favorable for his struggle against the genius of evil.

He will study (and this is a detail omitted from the letter of Sterne) to give no occasion for his wife's disgust. Also, he will resort moderately to the use of perfumes, which, however, always expose beauty to injurious suspicions.

He ought as carefully to study how to behave and how to pick out subjects of conversation, as if he were courting the most inconstant of women. It is for him that a philosopher has made the following reflection:

"More than one woman has been rendered unhappy for the rest of her life, has been lost and dishonored by a man whom she has ceased to love, because he took off his coat awkwardly, trimmed one of his nails crookedly, put on a stocking wrong side out, and was clumsy with a button."

One of the most important of his duties will be to conceal from his wife the real state of his fortune, so that he may satisfy her fancies and caprices as generous celibates are wont to do.

Then the most difficult thing of all, a thing to accomplish which superhuman courage is required, is to exercise the most complete control over the ass of which Sterne speaks. This ass ought to be as submissive as a serf of the thirteenth century was to his lord; to obey and be silent, advance and stop, at the slightest word.

Even when equipped with these advantages, a husband enters the lists with scarcely any hope of success. Like all the rest, he still runs the risk of becoming, for his wife, a sort of responsible editor.

"And why!" will exclaim certain good but small-minded people, whose horizon is limited to the tip of their nose, "why is it