The Enemies of Women (Los enemigos de la mujer)

"The one thing I insist on," continued the Prince after a long pause, "is that we live alone, as men among men. No women! Women must be excluded from our life in common."

The pianist opened his eyes in astonishment; Castro stirred in his chair; Novoa removed his glasses with a mechanical gesture of surprise, immediately adjusting them once more to his nose.

There was another silence.

"What you propose," said Atilio, at last, with a smile, "reminds me of a comedy of Shakespeare. No women! And the hero in the end gets married."

"I know that play," replied the Prince, "but I am not in the habit of governing my life according to comedies, and I don't believe in their teachings. You can rest assured that I shan't marry, even if it gives the lie to Shakespeare and the French king from whose chronicle he got the material for his work."

"But what you're attempting is absurd," Castro went on: "I don't know what the rest think, but prevent me from…!"

With a gesture he ended his protest.

Then seeing that the Prince had remained thoughtful, he added:

"It is quite evident that you have had your fill!.. You have gotten all you wanted, and now you want to force on us…"

The Prince, although absorbed in his own train of thought, he had not heard him, interrupted.

"Seeing that you can't get along without it… All right! I have no fixed intention of making a martyr of you. Go on being a slave to a necessity that is a result more of the imagination than of desire. Now that I really know life, I am astonished that men do so many foolish things for the sake of a passing pleasure. While you are here you may satisfy your whims whenever you like … but no women."

The three listeners looked at one another in astonishment; and even the Colonel, who never betrayed his feeling when his "lord" was speaking, showed a certain surprise on his countenance. What did the Prince mean?

"You are not ignorant, Atilio, of what a woman is. In the great majority of peoples on this earth there are only females. There are young females and old females; but there are no 'women.' Woman, as we understand the word, is the artificial product of civilizations which, somewhat like hot-house flowers, have reached their maturity with a complex perverse beauty. Only in the large cities that have come to be decadent because they have reached their limits, do you find 'women.' Not being mothers like the poor females, they give up all their time to love, prolong their youth marvelously, and scheme to inspire passions at an age when the others live like grandmothers. There you have the creatures that, personally, I am afraid of! If they come in here, it's the end of our society, our tranquil, even life."

The Prince arose from the table, and they all followed suit. Lunch being over they all passed into the great hall adjoining, where coffee was served. The Colonel looked about anxiously, examining the boxes of Havanas, and the large liquor chest with its varied cut glass and colored flasks, placed in a row.

While cutting the tip of his cigar, the Prince continued, speaking all the while to Castro:

"When you want … anything like that, all you need do is to choose in the vicinity of the Casino. A hundred or two francs; and then, good-by!.. But the other ones! The women! They work their way into our lives, and finally dominate us, and want to mold our ways to suit their own. Their love for us after all is merely vanity, like that of the conqueror who loves the land that he has conquered with violence. They have all read books – nearly always stupidly and without understanding, to be sure, but they have read books – and such reading leaves them determined to satisfy all sorts of vague desires, and absurd whims, that succeed only in making slaves of us, and in moving us to act on impulses we have acquired in our own early romantic readings… I know them. I have met too many of them in my life. If women from our social sphere mingle with us here, it means an end to peace. They will seek me out through curiosity on remembering my past life, or greed in thinking of my wealth; as for you men, they will come between you, making you jealous of one another and the life that I desire here will be impossible… Besides, we are poor."

Atilio protested, smilingly: "Oh! poor!"

"Poor when it comes to the follies of the old days," continued the Prince, "and for love one needs money. All that talk about love being a disinterested thing was made up by poor people, who are satisfied with imitations. There is a glitter of gold at the bottom of every passion. At first we don't think of such things; desire blinds us. All we see is the immediate domination of the person so sweetly our adversary. But love invariably ends by giving or taking money."

"Take money from a woman!.. Never!" said Castro, losing his ironic smile.

"You will end by taking it, if you are poor, and frequent the society of women. Those of our times think of nothing but money. When their love is a rich man, they ask him for it, even if they have a large fortune of their own. They feel less worthy if they don't ask. When they are fond of a poor man, they force him to receive gifts from them. They dominate him better by degrading him. Besides, in doing so they feel the selfish satisfaction of the person who gives alms. Woman, having always been forced to beg from man, has the greatest sensation of pride, and thinks she in turn can give money to some one of the sex that has always supported her."

Novoa, cup in hand, listened attentively to the Prince. Lubimoff was speaking of a world quite unknown to him. Spadoni, as he sipped his coffee, with a vague look in his eyes, was thinking of something far away.

"Now you know the worst, Atilio," the Prince went on. "No women!.. That way we will lead a great life. All the morning, free! We shan't see one another until lunch time. Down below is the cove, there are still a number of boats. We can fish, while it's sunny; we can go rowing. In the afternoon you will go to the Casino; occasionally I shall go, too, to hear some concert. Spring is drawing near. At night, sitting on the terrace, watching the stars, our friend Novoa, the man of learning of our monastery, will expound the music of the spheres; and Spadoni, our musician, will sit down at the piano, and delight us with terrestrial music."

"Splendid!" exclaimed Castro. "You are almost a poet in describing our future life, and you have persuaded me. We are going to be happy. But don't forget your permission for the 'female,' and your prohibition of 'women.' No skirts in Villa Sirena! Nothing but men; monks in trousers, selfish and tolerant, coming together to live a pleasant life, while the world is aflame."

Atilio remained thoughtful a few moments, and continued:

"We need a name; our community must have a title. We shall call ourselves 'the enemies of women'."

The Prince smiled.

"The name mustn't go any farther than ourselves. If people outside learned of it, they might think it meant something else."

Novoa, feeling honored by his new intimacy with men so different from those with whom he had previously associated, accepted the name with enthusiasm.

"I confess, gentlemen, that according to the distinction made by the Prince, I have never known a 'woman'. Females … poor ones, to be sure, a very few perhaps! But I like the name, and agree to join the 'enemies of women' even though a woman is never to enter my life."

Spadoni, as though suddenly awakening, turned to Castro, and continued his thought aloud.

"It's a system of stakes invented by an English lord, now dead, who won millions by it. They explained it to me yesterday. First you place…"

"No, no, you satanic pianist!" exclaimed Atilio. "You can explain it to me in the Casino, providing I have the curiosity to listen. You've made me lose a lot, with all your systems. I had better go on playing your 'number five.'"

The Colonel, who had listened in silence to the conversation in regard to women, seemed to recall something when Castro mentioned gambling.

"Last evening," he said to the Prince, in a mysterious voice, "I met the Duchess in the Casino"…

A look of silent questioning halted his words.

"What Duchess is that?"

"The question is quite in point, Michael," said Atilio. "Your 'chamberlain' is better acquainted in society than any man on the Riviera. He knows princesses and duchesses by the dozen. I have seen him dining in the Hôtel de Paris with all the ancient French nobility, who come here to console themselves for the long time it takes to bring back their former kings. In the private rooms in the Casino, he is always kissing wrinkled hands and bowing to some group of disgusting mummies loaded down with the oldest and most famous names. Some of them call him simply 'Colonel'; others introduce him with the title of 'aide de camp of Prince Lubimoff'."

Don Marcos stiffened, offended by the waggish tone in which his high estate was being mentioned, and said haughtily:

"Señor de Castro, I am a soldier grown old in defense of Legitimacy; I shed my blood for the sacred tradition, and there is nothing remarkable about my association with…"

The Prince knowing by experience that the Colonel did not know what time was, when once he began to talk about "legitimacy" and the blood he had shed, hastened to interrupt him.

"All right; we know that very well already. But who was this Duchess you met?"

"The Duchess de Delille. She often asks about your Highness, and upon hearing that you had just arrived, she gave me to understand that she intended paying you a call."

The Prince replied with a simple exclamation, and then remained silent.

"We are starting well," said Castro, laughing. "'No women!' And immediately the Colonel announces a visit from one of them, one of the most dangerous… For you will admit that a Duchess like that is one of the 'women' you described to us."

"I won't receive her," said the Prince resolutely.

"I have an idea that this Duchess is a cousin of yours."

"There is no such relationship. Her father was the brother of my mother's second husband. But we have known each other since childhood, and we each have a most unpleasant memory of one another. When I was living in Russia she married a French Duke. She had the same desire as the majority of wealthy American girls: a great title of nobility in order to make her friends among the fair sex jealous and to shine in European circles. A few months later she left the Duke, assigning him a certain income, which is just what her noble husband wanted perhaps. This woman Alicia never appealed to me particularly… Besides, she has lived life just as she pleased… She has seen almost as much of it as I have. She has as much of a reputation as I. They even accuse her, just as they do me, of love affairs with people she has never seen… They tell me that in recent years she has been parading around with a young lad, almost a child … dear me! We are getting old!"

"I saw her with him in Paris," said Castro. "It was before the war. Later in Monte Carlo I met her, all by herself, without being able to find a trace of her young chap anywhere. He must have been a passing fancy of hers… She has been here three years now. When summer comes she moves to Aix-les-Bains, or to Biarritz, but as soon as the Casino is gay and fashionable again, she is one of the first to return."

"Does she play?"

"Desperately. She plays high stakes and plays them badly, although we who think we play well always lose just the same, in the end. I mean, she puts her money on the table without thinking, in several places at a time, and then even forgets where she placed it. The 'leveurs des morts' are always hanging around to pick up the pieces that no one claims and when she wins, they always manage to get something of it. She gambled for two years with nothing less than chips of five hundred and a thousand francs. At present her chips are never for more than a hundred. It won't be long before she is using the red ones, the twenties, the favorites of your humble servant."