Part 18 (2/2)
”The guillotine! the guillotine!”
He died repeating it. Mad with terror, Madame fainted. She never regained consciousness. The terrifying name of the engine of death fluttered on her lips with her last breath.
The tragic beauty of this ending excited the admiration of the entire town.
”How they loved each other!” people said. ”Such a well-a.s.sorted couple!”
XXIII
LOVERS IN FLORENCE
The question of love and marriage has manifestly the most obsessing interest for humankind. Presumably dissatisfied with the actual experiences of life, men, women, old people and young, seek in fiction, in dreams, the unattainable or the unattained. Life pa.s.ses. Those among us who, on the brink of the grave, question themselves honestly, recognize that more chances of happiness were offered them than they, fickle or wavering, made s.h.i.+ft to grasp.
Our excellent ancestors of the ”lower” animal order have a fixed period for the joys of love, and even in monogamy, as I demonstrated in the story of my pigeons, do not pride themselves upon a ”virtue” beyond their power. The chief feature of the ”higher perfection” to which we aspire, in word if not in deed, seems to be that we are condemned by it to an hypocrisy born of discrepancy between the ideal and our ability to realize it. Marriage, when considered aside from its doctrinal aspect, is found to be a fairly effectual pledge against the straying of the imagination which is the forerunner of human weakness. To protect the weak, that is to say the woman and child, against the caprice of the strong, is a.s.suredly the duty of society. But who will claim that marriage, as the law has inst.i.tuted it, and as custom practises it, performs that office, and does not oftener than not result in the triumph, whether just or unjust, of man? Have we not heard, in the discussion of the divorce law, one of the chiefs of the ”advanced” party lending his eloquence to the furtherance of the doctrine of indissoluble marriage, while a famous radical argued that there was no equality between the adultery of the husband and that of the wife, when viewed as a conjugal misdemeanour justifying final separation?
The mistake lies in regarding as immutable, and acting upon it as such, a thing that is, in fact, the most unstable and variable in the world, viz.: the human being, in perpetual process of change. To ensure the durability of a union for that lightning flash which we pompously term ”all time,” the parallel development of two beings would be necessary, two beings whom differing heredities in most cases predispose to the most fatal divergences. One must admit that the chance of it is small.
I discussed this topic, only a few days ago, with a charming woman, made famous throughout Europe by her art, who has with the greatest dignity practiced that free bounteousness of self which men audaciously claim as their exclusive prerogative. She ingenuously maintained that the act which men consider of no consequence when practised by themselves has no importance either in the case of woman, except in the event of maternity.
”And,” she said, ”men take advantage of this iniquitous law of nature, adding to it a corresponding social injustice which leaves us no choice except between 'honour' and liberty. Fortunately life is mightier than words, and women who are not by nature slaves will always have the resource that masculine vanity has so foolishly made attractive by making of it forbidden fruit.”
”You a.s.sert, then,” I suggested with a certain timidity, ”that all women worthy of the name either do or should deceive their husbands?”
”Oh, my a.s.sertion is merely that most women if deceived by their husbands have the right to give back what they get. As for those who are unfaithful to a faithful husband, I see no reason for your refusing them the initiative you grant to the man who goes out on pleasure bent while his chaste wife sits at home spinning her wool, and wiping her children's noses.”
”That is practically what I said; that any woman with self-respect----”
”--has the same rights as the man without self-respect----”
”--and should use them----?”
”--and may use them to suit herself without the least shadow of remorse.”
”Complete liberty, then, for each to be unfaithful to the other.”
”Proclaim this maxim or not, the world has not waited for you to formulate it before putting it into practice.”
”You think, then, that in reality most women are unfaithful to their husbands?”
”I think that in reality most men are unfaithful to their wives--and their mistresses, too, as soon as the wife or mistress expects anything from duty, even though unwritten duty, instead of the free attraction of sentiment or of the flesh. I believe that most women who are unfaithful to their husbands are unfaithful to their lovers under the same circ.u.mstances, that is to say as soon as the lover imposes himself by the rights of--morally--a husband, if the combination of words is admissible. Worse than that! As fast as odious habit changes lover into husband, and mistress into wife, the actual husband, who was the lover in the first days of marriage, and the actual wife, who was the legitimatized mistress upon leaving the church door, regain the ascendency.”
”Too late.”
”Not always. Stop and think. Women more or less deceive their lovers with their husbands. That is cla.s.sic in happy homes.”
”So one hears. But how can one be sure?”
”How many cases I might quote to bear me out! Shall I tell you a case I have recently known?”
<script>