Petty Troubles of Married Life, Complete

The country house, so ardently longed for by Caroline, has now become a diabolical invention of Adolphe’s, a trap into which the fawn has fallen.

Since Adolphe’s discovery that it is impossible to reason with Caroline, he lets her say whatever she pleases.

Two months after, he sells the villa which cost him twenty-two thousand francs for seven thousand! But he gains this by the adventure – he finds out that the country is not the thing that Caroline wants.

The question is becoming serious. Nature, with its woods, its forests, its valleys, the Switzerland of the environs of Paris, the artificial rivers, have amused Caroline for barely six months. Adolphe is tempted to abdicate and take Caroline’s part himself.

A HOUSEHOLD REVOLUTION

One morning, Adolphe is seized by the triumphant idea of letting Caroline find out for herself what she wants. He gives up to her the control of the house, saying, “Do as you like.” He substitutes the constitutional system for the autocratic system, a responsible ministry for an absolute conjugal monarchy. This proof of confidence – the object of much secret envy – is, to women, a field-marshal’s baton. Women are then, so to speak, mistresses at home.

After this, nothing, not even the memory of the honey-moon, can be compared to Adolphe’s happiness for several days. A woman, under such circumstances, is all sugar. She is too sweet: she would invent the art of petting and cosseting and of coining tender little names, if this matrimonial sugar-plummery had not existed ever since the Terrestrial Paradise. At the end of the month, Adolphe’s condition is like that of children towards the close of New Year’s week. So Caroline is beginning to say, not in words, but in acts, in manner, in mimetic expressions: “It’s difficult to tell what to do to please a man!”

Giving up the helm of the boat to one’s wife, is an exceedingly ordinary idea, and would hardly deserve the qualification of “triumphant,” which we have given it at the commencement of this chapter, if it were not accompanied by that of taking it back again. Adolphe was seduced by a wish, which invariably seizes persons who are the prey of misfortune, to know how far an evil will go! – to try how much damage fire will do when left to itself, the individual possessing, or thinking he possesses, the power to arrest it. This curiosity pursues us from the cradle to the grave. Then, after his plethora of conjugal felicity, Adolphe, who is treating himself to a farce in his own house, goes through the following phases:

FIRST EPOCH. Things go on altogether too well. Caroline buys little account books to keep a list of her expenses in, she buys a nice little piece of furniture to store her money in, she feeds Adolphe superbly, she is happy in his approbation, she discovers that very many articles are needed in the house. It is her ambition to be an incomparable housekeeper. Adolphe, who arrogates to himself the right of censorship, no longer finds the slightest suggestion to make.

When he dresses himself, everything is ready to his hands. Not even in Armide’s garden was more ingenious tenderness displayed than that of Caroline. For her phoenix husband, she renews the wax upon his razor strap, she substitutes new suspenders for old ones. None of his button-holes are ever widowed. His linen is as well cared for as that of the confessor of the devotee, all whose sins are venial. His stockings are free from holes. At table, his tastes, his caprices even, are studied, consulted: he is getting fat! There is ink in his inkstand, and the sponge is always moist. He never has occasion to say, like Louis XIV, “I came near having to wait!” In short, he hears himself continually called a love of a man. He is obliged to reproach Caroline for neglecting herself: she does not pay sufficient attention to her own needs. Of this gentle reproach Caroline takes note.

SECOND EPOCH. The scene changes, at table. Everything is exceedingly dear. Vegetables are beyond one’s means. Wood sells as if it came from Campeche. Fruit? Oh! as to fruit, princes, bankers and great lords alone can eat it. Dessert is a cause of ruin. Adolphe often hears Caroline say to Madame Deschars: “How do you manage?” Conferences are held in your presence upon the proper way to keep cooks under the thumb.

A cook who entered your service without effects, without clothes, and without talent, has come to get her wages in a blue merino gown, set off by an embroidered neckerchief, her ears embellished with a pair of ear-rings enriched with small pearls, her feet clothed in comfortable shoes which give you a glimpse of neat cotton stockings. She has two trunks full of property, and keeps an account at the savings bank.

Upon this Caroline complains of the bad morals of the lower classes: she complains of the education and the knowledge of figures which distinguish domestics. From time to time she utters little axioms like the following: There are some mistakes you must make! – It’s only those who do nothing who do everything well. – She has the anxieties that belong to power. – Ah! men are fortunate in not having a house to keep. – Women bear the burden of the innumerable details.

THIRD EPOCH. Caroline, absorbed in the idea that you should eat merely to live, treats Adolphe to the delights of a cenobitic table.

Adolphe’s stockings are either full of holes or else rough with the lichen of hasty mendings, for the day is not long enough for all that his wife has to do. He wears suspenders blackened by use. His linen is old and gapes like a door-keeper, or like the door itself. At a time when Adolphe is in haste to conclude a matter of business, it takes him an hour to dress: he has to pick out his garments one by one, opening many an article before finding one fit to wear. But Caroline is charmingly dressed. She has pretty bonnets, velvet boots, mantillas. She has made up her mind, she conducts her administration in virtue of this principle: Charity well understood begins at home. When Adolphe complains of the contrast between his poverty-stricken wardrobe and Caroline’s splendor, she says, “Why, you reproached me with buying nothing for myself!”

The husband and the wife here begin to bandy jests more or less acrimonious. One evening Caroline makes herself very agreeable, in order to insinuate an avowal of a rather large deficit, just as the ministry begins to eulogize the tax-payers, and boast of the wealth of the country, when it is preparing to bring forth a bill for an additional appropriation. There is this further similitude that both are done in the chamber, whether in administration or in housekeeping. From this springs the profound truth that the constitutional system is infinitely dearer than the monarchical system. For a nation as for a household, it is the government of the happy balance, of mediocrity, of chicanery.

Adolphe, enlightened by his past annoyances, waits for an opportunity to explode, and Caroline slumbers in a delusive security.

What starts the quarrel? Do we ever know what electric current precipitates the avalanche or decides a revolution? It may result from anything or nothing. But finally, Adolphe, after a period to be determined in each case by the circumstances of the couple, utters this fatal phrase, in the midst of a discussion: “Ah! when I was a bachelor!”

Her husband’s bachelor life is to a woman what the phrase, “My dear deceased,” is to a widow’s second husband. These two stings produce wounds which are never completely healed.

Then Adolphe goes on like General Bonaparte haranguing the Five Hundred: “We are on a volcano! – The house no longer has a head, the time to come to an understanding has arrived. – You talk of happiness, Caroline, but you have compromised, imperiled it by your exactions, you have violated the civil code: you have mixed yourself up in the discussions of business, and you have invaded the conjugal authority. – We must reform our internal affairs.”

Caroline does not shout, like the Five Hundred, “Down with the dictator!” For people never shout a man down, when they feel that they can put him down.

“When I was a bachelor I had none but new stockings! I had a clean napkin every day on my plate. The restaurateur only fleeced me of a determinate sum. I have given up to you my beloved liberty! What have you done with it?”

“Am I then so very wrong, Adolphe, to have sought to spare you numerous cares?” says Caroline, taking an attitude before her husband. “Take the key of the money-box back, – but do you know what will happen? I am ashamed, but you will compel me to go on to the stage to get the merest necessaries of life. Is this what you want? Degrade your wife, or bring in conflict two contrary, hostile interests – ”

Such, for three quarters of the French people is an exact definition of marriage.

“Be perfectly easy, dear,” resumes Caroline, seating herself in her chair like Marius on the ruins of Carthage, “I will never ask you for anything. I am not a beggar! I know what I’ll do – you don’t know me yet.”

“Well, what will you do?” asks Adolphe; “it seems impossible to joke or have an explanation with you women. What will you do?”

“It doesn’t concern you at all.”

“Excuse me, madame, quite the contrary. Dignity, honor – ”

“Oh, have no fear of that, sir. For your sake more than for my own, I will keep it a dead secret.”

“Come, Caroline, my own Carola, what do you mean to do?”

Caroline darts a viper-like glance at Adolphe, who recoils and proceeds to walk up and down the room.

“There now, tell me, what will you do?” he repeats after much too prolonged a silence.

“I shall go to work, sir!”

At this sublime declaration, Adolphe executes a movement in retreat, detecting a bitter exasperation, and feeling the sharpness of a north wind which had never before blown in the matrimonial chamber.

THE ART OF BEING A VICTIM

On and after the Revolution, our vanquished Caroline adopts an infernal system, the effect of which is to make you regret your victory every hour. She becomes the opposition! Should Adolphe have one more such triumph, he would appear before the Court of Assizes, accused of having smothered his wife between two mattresses, like Shakespeare’s Othello. Caroline puts on the air of a martyr; her submission is positively killing. On every occasion she assassinates Adolphe with a “Just as you like!” uttered in tones whose sweetness is something fearful. No elegiac poet could compete with Caroline, who utters elegy upon elegy: elegy in action, elegy in speech: her smile is elegiac, her silence is elegiac, her gestures are elegiac. Here are a few examples, wherein every household will find some of its impressions recorded:

AFTER BREAKFAST. “Caroline, we go to-night to the Deschars’ grand ball you know.”

“Yes, love.”

AFTER DINNER. “What, not dressed yet, Caroline?” exclaims Adolphe, who has just made his appearance, magnificently equipped.

He finds Caroline arrayed in a gown fit for an elderly lady of strong conversational powers, a black moire with an old-fashioned fan-waist. Flowers, too badly imitated to deserve the name of artificial, give a gloomy aspect to a head of hair which the chambermaid has carelessly arranged. Caroline’s gloves have already seen wear and tear.

“I am ready, my dear.”

“What, in that dress?”

“I have no other. A new dress would have cost three hundred francs.”

“Why did you not tell me?”

“I, ask you for anything, after what has happened!”

“I’ll go alone,” says Adolphe, unwilling to be humiliated in his wife.

“I dare say you are very glad to,” returns Caroline, in a captious tone, “it’s plain enough from the way you are got up.”

Eleven persons are in the parlor, all invited to dinner by Adolphe. Caroline is there, looking as if her husband had invited her too. She is waiting for dinner to be served.

“Sir,” says the parlor servant in a whisper to his master, “the cook doesn’t know what on earth to do!”

“What’s the matter?”