Part 77 (1/2)
OBSERVATION. During the honey-moon, some few married couples,--very young ones,--make use of languages, which, in ancient days, Aristotle cla.s.sified and defined. (See his Pedagogy.) Thus they are perpetually using such terminations as _lala_, _nana_, _coachy-poachy_, just as mothers and nurses use them to babies. This is one of the secret reasons, discussed and recognized in big quartos by the Germans, which determined the Cabires, the creators of the Greek mythology, to represent Love as a child. There are other reasons very well known to women, the princ.i.p.al of which is, that, in their opinion, love in men is always _small_.
”Where did you get that idea, my sweet? You must have dreamed it!”
”What!”
Caroline stands stark still: she opens wide her eyes which are already considerably widened by amazement. Being inwardly epileptic, she says not a word: she merely gazes at Adolphe. Under the satanic fires of their gaze, Adolphe turns half way round toward the dining-room; but he asks himself whether it would not be well to let Caroline take one lesson, and to tip the wink to the riding-master, to disgust her with equestrianism by the harshness of his style of instruction.
There is nothing so terrible as an actress who reckons upon a success, and who _fait four_.
In the language of the stage, to _faire four_ is to play to a wretchedly thin house, or to obtain not the slightest applause. It is taking great pains for nothing, in short a _signal failure_.
This petty trouble--it is very petty--is reproduced in a thousand ways in married life, when the honey-moon is over, and when the wife has no personal fortune.
In spite of the author's repugnance to inserting anecdotes in an exclusively aphoristic work, the tissue of which will bear nothing but the most delicate and subtle observations,--from the nature of the subject at least,--it seems to him necessary to ill.u.s.trate this page by an incident narrated by one of our first physicians. This repet.i.tion of the subject involves a rule of conduct very much in use with the doctors of Paris.
A certain husband was in our Adolphe's situation. His Caroline, having once made a signal failure, was determined to conquer, for Caroline often does conquer! (See _The Physiology of Marriage_, Meditation XXVI, Paragraph _Nerves_.) She had been lying about on the sofas for two months, getting up at noon, taking no part in the amus.e.m.e.nts of the city. She would not go to the theatre,--oh, the disgusting atmosphere!--the lights, above all, the lights! Then the bustle, coming out, going in, the music,--it might be fatal, it's so terribly exciting!
She would not go on excursions to the country, oh, certainly it was her desire to do so!--but she would like (desiderata) a carriage of her own, horses of her own--her husband would not give her an equipage. And as to going in hacks, in hired conveyances, the bare thought gave her a rising at the stomach!
She would not have any cooking--the smell of the meats produced a sudden nausea. She drank innumerable drugs that her maid never saw her take.
In short, she expended large amounts of time and money in att.i.tudes, privations, effects, pearl-white to give her the pallor of a corpse, machinery, and the like, precisely as when the manager of a theatre spreads rumors about a piece gotten up in a style of Oriental magnificence, without regard to expense!
This couple had got so far as to believe that even a journey to the springs, to Ems, to Hombourg, to Carlsbad, would hardly cure the invalid: but madame would not budge, unless she could go in her own carriage. Always that carriage!
Adolphe held out, and would not yield.
Caroline, who was a woman of great sagacity, admitted that her husband was right.
”Adolphe is right,” she said to her friends, ”it is I who am unreasonable: he can not, he ought not, have a carriage yet: men know better than we do the situation of their business.”
At times Adolphe was perfectly furious! Women have ways about them that demand the justice of Tophet itself. Finally, during the third month, he met one of his school friends, a lieutenant in the corps of physicians, modest as all young doctors are: he had had his epaulettes one day only, and could give the order to fire!
”For a young woman, a young doctor,” said our Adolphe to himself.
And he proposed to the future Bianchon to visit his wife and tell him the truth about her condition.
”My dear, it is time that you should have a physician,” said Adolphe that evening to his wife, ”and here is the best for a pretty woman.”
The novice makes a conscientious examination, questions madame, feels her pulse discreetly, inquires into the slightest symptoms, and, at the end, while conversing, allows a smile, an expression, which, if not ironical, are extremely incredulous, to play involuntarily upon his lips, and his lips are quite in sympathy with his eyes. He prescribes some insignificant remedy, and insists upon its importance, promising to call again to observe its effect. In the ante-chamber, thinking himself alone with his school-mate, he indulges in an inexpressible shrug of the shoulders.
”There's nothing the matter with your wife, my boy,” he says: ”she is trifling with both you and me.”
”Well, I thought so.”
”But if she continues the joke, she will make herself sick in earnest: I am too sincerely your friend to enter into such a speculation, for I am determined that there shall be an honest man beneath the physician, in me--”
”My wife wants a carriage.”