CHAPTER V. A PHILOSOPHER'S ADVICE
Desgenais saw that my despair was incurable, that I would neither listento any advice nor leave my room, he took the thing seriously. I saw himenter one evening with an expression of gravity on his face; he spoke ofmy mistress and continued in his tone of persiflage, saying all mannerof evil of women. While he was speaking I was leaning on my elbow, and,rising in my bed, I listened attentively.
It was one of those sombre evenings when the sighing of the wind recallsthe moaning of a dying man. A fitful storm was brewing, and betweenthe plashes of rain on the windows there was the silence of death. Allnature suffers in such moments, the trees writhe in pain and hide theirheads; the birds of the fields cower under the bushes; the streets ofcities are deserted. I was suffering from my wound. But a short timebefore I had a mistress and a friend. The mistress had deceived meand the friend had stretched me on a bed of pain. I could not clearlydistinguish what was passing in my head; it seemed to me that I wasunder the influence of a horrible dream and that I had but to awake tofind myself cured; at times it seemed that my entire life had been adream, ridiculous and puerile, the falseness of which had just beendisclosed. Desgenais was seated near the lamp at my side; he was firmand serious, although a smile hovered about his lips. He was a man ofheart, but as dry as a pumice-stone. An early experience had made himbald before his time; he knew life and had suffered; but his grief was acuirass; he was a materialist and he waited for death.
"Octave," he said, "after what has happened to you, I see that youbelieve in love such as the poets and romancers have represented; in aword, you believe in what is said here below and not in what is done.That is because you do not reason soundly, and it may lead you intogreat misfortune.
"Poets represent love as sculptors design beauty, as musicians createmelody; that is to say, endowed with an exquisite nervous organization,they gather up with discerning ardor the purest elements of life,the most beautiful lines of matter, and the most harmonious voices ofnature. There lived, it is said, at Athens a great number of beautifulgirls; Praxiteles drew them all one after another; then from thesediverse types of beauty, each one of which had its defects, he formed asingle faultless beauty and created Venus. The man who first created amusical instrument, and who gave to harmony its rules and its laws, hadfor a long time listened to the murmuring of reeds and the singing ofbirds. Thus the poets, who understand life, after knowing much of love,more or less transitory, after feeling that sublime exaltation whichreal passion can for the moment inspire, eliminating from human natureall that degrades it, created the mysterious names which through theages fly from lip to lip: Daphnis and Chloe, Hero and Leander, Pyramusand Thisbe.
"To try to find in real life such love as this, eternal and absolute,is but to seek on public squares a woman such as Venus, or to expectnightingales to sing the symphonies of Beethoven.
"Perfection does not exist; to comprehend it is the triumph of humanintelligence; to desire to possess it, the most dangerous of follies.Open your window, Octave; do you not see the infinite? You try to formsome idea of a thing that has no limits, you who were born yesterday andwho will die to-morrow! This spectacle of immensity in every country inthe world produces the wildest illusions. Religions are born of it;it was to possess the infinite that Cato cut his throat, that theChristians delivered themselves to lions, the Huguenots to theCatholics; all the people of the earth have stretched out their handsto that immensity and have longed to plunge into it. The fool wishesto possess heaven; the sage admires it, kneels before it, but does notdesire it.
"Perfection, my friend, is no more made for us than immensity. We mustseek for nothing in it, demand nothing of it, neither love nor beauty,happiness nor virtue; but we must love it if we would be virtuous, if wewould attain the greatest happiness of which man is capable.
"Let us suppose you have in your study a picture by Raphael that youconsider perfect. Let us say that upon a close examination you discoverin one of the figures a gross defect of design, a limb distorted, or amuscle that belies nature, such as has been discovered, they say, in oneof the arms of an antique gladiator. You would experience a feeling ofdispleasure, but you would not throw that picture in the fire; you wouldmerely say that it is not perfect, but that it has qualities that areworthy of admiration.
"There are women whose natural singleness of heart and sincerity aresuch that they could not have two lovers at the same time. You believedyour mistress such an one; that is best, I admit. You have discoveredthat she has deceived you; does that oblige you to depose and to abuseher, to believe her deserving of your hatred?
"Even if your mistress had never deceived you, even if at this momentshe loved none other than you, think, Octave, how far her love wouldstill be from perfection, how human it would be, how small, howrestrained by the hypocrisies and conventions of the world; rememberthat another man possessed her before you, that many others will possessher after you.
"Reflect: what drives you at this moment to despair is the idea ofperfection in your mistress, the idea that has been shattered. Butwhen you understand that the primal idea itself was human, small andrestricted, you will see that it is little more than a rung in therotten ladder of human imperfection.
"I think you will readily admit that your mistress has had otheradmirers, and that she will have still others in the future; you willdoubtless reply that it matters little, so long as she loved you. But Iask you, since she has had others, what difference does it make whetherit was yesterday or two years since? Since she loves but one at a time,what does it matter whether it is during an interval of two years orin the course of a single night? Are you a man, Octave? Do you see theleaves falling from the trees, the sun rising and setting? Do you hearthe ticking of the horologe of time with each pulsation of your heart?Is there, then, such a difference between the love of a year and thelove of an hour? I challenge you to answer that, you fool, as you sitthere looking out at the infinite through a window not larger than yourhand.
"You consider that woman faithful who loves you two years; you must havean almanac that will indicate just how long it takes for an honest man'skisses to dry on a woman's lips. You make a distinction between thewoman who sells herself for money and the one who gives herself forpleasure; between the one who gives herself through pride and the onewho gives herself through devotion. Among women who are for sale, somecost more than others; among those who are sought for pleasure someinspire more confidence than others; and among those who are worthy ofdevotion there are some who receive a third of a man's heart, others aquarter, others a half, depending upon her education, her manner, hername, her birth, her beauty, her temperament, according to the occasion,according to what is said, according to the time, according to what youhave drunk at dinner.
"You love women, Octave, because you are young, ardent, because yourfeatures are regular, and your hair dark and glossy, but you do not, forall that, understand woman.
"Nature, having all, desires the reproduction of beings; everywhere,from the summit of the mountain to the bottom of the sea, lifeis opposed to death. God, to conserve the work of His hands, hasestablished this law-that the greatest pleasure of all sentient beingsshall be to procreate.
"Oh! my friend, when you feel bursting on your lips the vow ofeternal love, do not be afraid to yield, but do not confound wine withintoxication; do not think of the cup divine because the draught is ofcelestial flavor; do not be astonished to find it broken and empty inthe evening. It is but woman, but a fragile vase, made of earth by apotter.
"Thank God for giving you a glimpse of heaven, but do not imagineyourself a bird because you can flap your wings. The birds themselvescan not escape the clouds; there is a region where air fails them andthe lark, rising with its song into the morning fog, sometimes fallsback dead in the field.
"Take love as a sober man takes wine; do not become a drunkard. If yourmistress is sincere and faithful, love her for that; but if she isnot, if she is merely young and beautiful, love her for that
; if she isagreeable and spirituelle, love her for that; if she is none of thesethings but merely loves you, love her for that. Love does not come to usevery day.
"Do not tear your hair and stab yourself because you have a rival. Yousay that your mistress deceives you for another; it is your pride thatsuffers; but change the words, say that it is for you that she deceiveshim, and behold, you are happy!
"Do not make a rule of conduct, and do not say that you wish to beloved exclusively, for in saying that, as you are a man and inconstantyourself, you are forced to add tacitly: 'As far as possible.'
"Take time as it comes, the wind as it blows, woman as she is. TheSpaniards, first among women, love faithfully; their hearts are sincereand violent, but they wear a dagger just above them. Italian women arelascivious. The English are exalted and melancholy, cold and unnatural.The German women are tender and sweet, but colorless and monotonous. TheFrench are spirituelle, elegant, and voluptuous, but are false at heart.
"Above all, do not accuse women of being what they are; we have madethem thus, undoing the work of nature.
"Nature, who thinks of everything, made the virgin for love; but withthe first child her bosom loses form, her beauty its freshness. Womanis made for motherhood. Man would perhaps abandon her, disgusted bythe loss of beauty; but his child clings to him and weeps. Beholdthe family, the human law; everything that departs from this law ismonstrous.
"Civilization thwarts the ends of nature. In our cities, according toour customs, the virgin destined by nature for the open air, made torun in the sunlight; to admire the nude wrestlers, as in Lacedemonia,to choose and to love, is shut up in close confinement and bolted in.Meanwhile she hides romance under her cross; pale and idle, shefades away and loses, in the silence of the nights, that beauty whichoppresses her and needs the open air. Then she is suddenly snatched fromthis solitude, knowing nothing, loving nothing, desiring everything; anold woman instructs her, a mysterious word is whispered in her ear, andshe is thrown into the arms of a stranger. There you have marriage, thatis to say, the civilized family.
"A child is born. This poor creature has lost her beauty and she hasnever loved. The child is brought to her with the words: 'You are amother.' She replies: 'I am not a mother; take that child to some womanwho can nurse it. I can not.' Her husband tells her that she is right,that her child would be disgusted with her. She receives carefulattention and is soon cured of the disease of maternity. A month latershe may be seen at the Tuileries, at the ball, at the opera; her childis at Chaillot, at Auxerre; her husband with another woman. Then youngmen speak to her of love, of devotion, of sympathy, of all that is inthe heart. She takes one, draws him to her bosom; he dishonors her andreturns to the Bourse. She cries all night, but discovers that tearsmake her eyes red. She takes a consoler, for the loss of whom anotherconsoles her; thus up to the age of thirty or more. Then, blase andcorrupted, with no human sentiment, not even disgust, she meets a fineyouth with raven locks, ardent eye and hopeful heart; she recalls herown youth, she remembers what she has suffered, and telling him thestory of her life, she teaches him to eschew love.
"That is woman as we have made her; such are your mistresses. But yousay they are women and that there is something good in them!
"But if your character is formed, if you are truly a man, sure ofyourself and confident of your strength, you may taste of life withoutfear and without reserve; you may be sad or joyous, deceived orrespected; but be sure you are loved, for what matters the rest?
"If you are mediocre and ordinary, I advise you to consider your coursevery carefully before deciding, but do not expect too much of yourmistress.
"If you are weak, dependent upon others, inclined to allow yourself tobe dominated by opinion, to take root wherever you see a little soil,make for yourself a shield that will resist everything, for if you yieldto your weaker nature you will not grow, you will dry up like a deadplant, and you will bear neither fruit nor flowers. The sap of your lifewill dissipate into the formation of useless bark; all your actions willbe as colorless as the leaves of the willow; you will have no tears towater you, but those from your own eyes; to nourish you, no heart butyour own.
"But if you are of an exalted nature, believing in dreams and wishing torealize them, I say to you plainly: Love does not exist.
"For to love is to give body and soul, or better, it is to make a singlebeing of two; it is to walk in the sunlight, in the open air throughthe boundless prairies with a body having four arms, two heads, and twohearts. Love is faith, it is the religion of terrestrial happiness, itis a luminous triangle suspended in the temple of the world. To loveis to walk freely through that temple, at your side a being capable ofunderstanding why a thought, a word, a flower makes you pause and raiseyour eyes to that celestial triangle. To exercise the noble faculties ofman is a great good--that is why genius is glorious; but to double thosefaculties, to place a heart and an intelligence upon a heart and anintelligence--that is supreme happiness. God has nothing better for man;that is why love is better than genius.
"But tell me, is that the love of our women? No, no, it must beadmitted. Love, for them, is another thing; it is to go out veiled, towrite in secret, to make trembling advances, to heave chaste sighs understarched and unnatural robes, then to draw bolts and throw them aside,to humiliate a rival, to deceive a husband, to render a lover desolate.To love, for our women, is to play at lying, as children play at hideand seek, a hideous orgy of the heart, worse than the lubricity of theRomans, or the Saturnalia of Priapus; a bastard parody of vice itself,as well as of virtue; a loathsome comedy where all is whispering andsidelong glances, where all is small, elegant, and deformed, like thoseporcelain monsters brought from China; a lamentable satire on all thatis beautiful and ugly, divine and infernal; a shadow without a body, askeleton of all that God has made."
Thus spoke Desgenais; and the shadows of night began to fall.