The Marriage Contract

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THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT

BY

HONORE DE BALZAC



Translated by
Katharine Prescott Wormeley



DEDICATION

To Rossini.





THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT



CHAPTER I

PRO AND CON

Monsieur de Manerville, the father, was a worthy Norman gentleman,
well known to the Marechael de Richelieu, who married him to one of
the richest heiresses of Bordeaux in the days when the old duke
reigned in Guienne as governor. The Norman then sold the estate he
owned in Bessin, and became a Gascon, allured by the beauty of the
chateau de Lanstrac, a delightful residence owned by his wife. During
the last days of the reign of Louis XV., he bought the post of major
of the Gate Guards, and lived till 1813, having by great good luck
escaped the dangers of the Revolution in the following manner.

Toward the close of the year, 1790, he went to Martinque, where his
wife had interests, leaving the management of his property in Gascogne
to an honest man, a notary's clerk, named Mathias, who was inclined to
--or at any rate did--give into the new ideas. On his return the Comte
de Manerville found his possessions intact and well-managed. This
sound result was the fruit produced by grafting the Gascon on the
Norman.

Madame de Manerville died in 1810. Having learned the importance of
worldly goods through the dissipations of his youth, and, giving them,
like many another old man, a higher place than they really hold in
life, Monsieur de Manerville became increasingly economical, miserly,
and sordid. Without reflecting that the avarice of parents prepares
the way for the prodigalities of children, he allowed almost nothing
to his son, although that son was an only child.

Paul de Manerville, coming home from the college of Vendome in 1810,
lived under close paternal discipline for three years. The tyranny by
which the old man of seventy oppressed his heir influenced,
necessarily, a heart and a character which were not yet formed. Paul,
the son, without lacking the physical courage which is vital in the
air of Gascony, dared not struggle against his father, and
consequently lost that faculty of resistance which begets moral
courage. His thwarted feelings were driven to the depths of his heart,
where they remained without expression; later, when he felt them to be
out of harmony with the maxims of the world, he could only think
rightly and act mistakenly. He was capable of fighting for a mere word
or look, yet he trembled at the thought of dismissing a servant,--his
timidity showing itself in those contests only which required a
persistent will. Capable of doing great things to fly from
persecution, he would never have prevented it by systematic
opposition, nor have faced it with the steady employment of force of
will. Timid in thought, bold in actions, he long preserved that inward
simplicity which makes a man the dupe and the voluntary victim of
things against which certain souls hesitate to revolt, preferring to
endure them rather than complain. He was, in point of fact, imprisoned
by his father's old mansion, for he had not enough money to consort
with young men; he envied their pleasures while unable to share them.

The old gentleman took him every evening, in an old carriage drawn by
ill-harnessed old horses, attended by ill-dressed old servants, to
royalist houses, where he met a society composed of the relics of the
parliamentary nobility and the martial nobility. These two nobilities
coalescing after the Revolution, had now transformed themselves into a
landed aristocracy. Crushed by the vast and swelling fortunes of the
maritime cities, this Faubourg Saint-Germain of Bordeaux responded by
lofty disdain to the sumptuous displays of commerce, government
administrations, and the military. Too young to understand social
distinctions and the necessities underlying the apparent assumption
which they create, Paul was bored to death among these ancients,
unaware that the connections of his youth would eventually secure to
him that aristocratic pre-eminence which Frenchmen will forever
desire.

He found some slight compensations for the dulness of these evenings
in certain manual exercises which always delight young men, and which
his father enjoined upon him. The old gentleman considered that to
know the art of fencing and the use of arms, to ride well on
horseback, to play tennis, to acquire good manners,--in short, to
possess all the frivolous accomplishments of the old nobility,--made a
young man of the present day a finished gentleman. Accordingly, Paul
took a fencing-lesson every morning, went to the riding-school, and
practised in a pistol-gallery. The rest of his time was spent in
reading novels, for his father would never have allowed the more
abstruse studies now considered necessary to finish an education.

So monotonous a life would soon have killed the poor youth if the
death of the old man had not delivered him from this tyranny at the
moment when it was becoming intolerable. Paul found himself in
possession of considerable capital, accumulated by his father's
avarice, together with landed estates in the best possible condition.
But he now held Bordeaux in horror; neither did he like Lanstrac,
where his father had taken him to spend the summers, employing his
whole time from morning till night in hunting.

As soon as the estate was fairly settled, the young heir, eager for
enjoyment, bought consols with his capital, left the management of the
landed property to old Mathias, his father's notary, and spent the
next six years away from Bordeaux. At first he was attached to the
French embassy at Naples; after that he was secretary of legation at
Madrid, and then in London,--making in this way the tour of Europe.

After seeing the world and life, after losing several illusions, after
dissipating all the loose capital which his father had amassed, there
came a time when, in order to continue his way of life, Paul was
forced to draw upon the territorial revenues which his notary was
laying by. At this critical moment, seized by one of the so-called
virtuous impulses, he determined to leave Paris, return to Bordeaux,
regulate his affairs, lead the life of a country gentleman at
Lanstrac, improve his property, marry, and become, in the end, a
deputy.

Paul was a count; nobility was once more of matrimonial value; he
could, and he ought to make a good marriage. While many women desire a
title, many others like to marry a man to whom a knowledge of life is
familiar. Now Paul had acquired, in exchange for the sum of seven
hundred thousand francs squandered in six years, that possession,
which cannot be bought and is practically of more value than gold and
silver; a knowledge which exacts long study, probation, examinations,
friends, enemies, acquaintances, certain manners, elegance of form and
demeanor, a graceful and euphonious name,--a knowledge, moreover,
which means many love-affairs, duels, bets lost on a race-course,
disillusions, deceptions, annoyances, toils, and a vast variety of
undigested pleasures. In short, he had become what is called elegant.
But in spite of his mad extravagance he had never made himself a mere
fashionable man. In the burlesque army of men of the world, the man of
fashion holds the place of a marshal of France, the man of elegance is
the equivalent of a lieutenant-general. Paul enjoyed his lesser
reputation, of elegance, and knew well how to sustain it. His servants
were well-dressed, his equipages were cited, his suppers had a certain
vogue; in short, his bachelor establishment was counted among the
seven or eight whose splendor equalled that of the finest houses in
Paris.

But--he had not caused the wretchedness of any woman; he gambled
without losing; his luck was not notorious; he was far too upright to
deceive or mislead any one, no matter who, even a wanton; never did he
leave his billets-doux lying about, and he possessed no coffer or desk
for love-letters which his friends were at liberty to read while he
tied his cravat or trimmed his beard. Moreover, not willing to dip
into his Guienne property, he had not that bold extravagance which
leads to great strokes and calls attention at any cost to the
proceedings of a young man. Neither did he borrow money, but he had
the folly to lend to friends, who then deserted him and spoke of him
no more either for good or evil. He seemed to have regulated his
dissipations methodically. The secret of his character lay in his
father's tyranny, which had made him, as it were, a social mongrel.

So, one morning, he said to a friend named de Marsay, who afterwards
became celebrated:--

"My dear fellow, life has a meaning."

"You must be twenty-seven years of age before you can find it out,"
replied de Marsay, laughing.

"Well, I am twenty-seven; and precisely because I am twenty-seven I
mean to live the life of a country gentleman at Lanstrac. I'll
transport my belongings to Bordeaux into my father's old mansion, and
I'll spend three months of the year in Paris in this house, which I
shall keep."

"Will you marry?"

"I will marry."

"I'm your friend, as you know, my old Paul," said de Marsay, after a
moment's silence, "and I say to you: settle down into a worthy father
and husband and you'll be ridiculous for the rest of your days. If you
could be happy and ridiculous, the thing might be thought of; but you
will not be happy. You haven't a strong enough wrist to drive a
household. I'll do you justice and say you are a perfect horseman; no
one knows as well as you how to pick up or thrown down the reins, and
make a horse prance, and sit firm to the saddle. But, my dear fellow,
marriage is another thing. I see you now, led along at a slapping pace
by Madame la Comtesse de Manerville, going whither you would not,
oftener at a gallop than a trot, and presently unhorsed!--yes,
unhorsed into a ditch and your legs broken. Listen to me. You still
have some forty-odd thousand francs a year from your property in the
Gironde. Good. Take your horses and servants and furnish your house in
Bordeaux; you can be king of Bordeaux, you can promulgate there the
edicts that we put forth in Paris; you can be the correspondent of our
stupidities. Very good. Play the rake in the provinces; better still,
commit follies; follies may win you celebrity. But--don't marry. Who
marries now-a-days? Only merchants, for the sake of their capital, or
to be two to drag the cart; only peasants who want to produce children
to work for them; only brokers and notaries who want a wife's 'dot' to
pay for their practice; only miserable kings who are forced to
continue their miserable dynasties. But we are exempt from the pack,
and you want to shoulder it! And why DO you want to marry? You ought
to give your best friend your reasons. In the first place, if you
marry an heiress as rich as yourself, eighty thousand francs a year
for two is not the same thing as forty thousand francs a year for one,
because the two are soon three or four when the children come. You
haven't surely any love for that silly race of Manerville which would
only hamper you? Are you ignorant of what a father and mother have to
be? Marriage, my old Paul, is the silliest of all the social
immolations; our children alone profit by it, and don't know its price
until their horses are nibbling the flowers on our grave. Do you
regret your father, that old tyrant who made your first years
wretched? How can you be sure that your children will love you? The
very care you take of their education, your precautions for their
happiness, your necessary sternness will lessen their affection.
Children love a weak or a prodigal father, whom they will despise in
after years. You'll live betwixt fear and contempt. No man is a good
head of a family merely because he wants to be. Look round on all our
friends and name to me one whom you would like to have for a son. We
have known a good many who dishonor their names. Children, my dear
Paul, are the most difficult kind of merchandise to take care of.
Yours, you think, will be angels; well, so be it! Have you ever
sounded the gulf which lies between the lives of a bachelor and a
married man? Listen. As a bachelor you can say to yourself: 'I shall
never exhibit more than a certain amount of the ridiculous; the public
will think of me what I choose it to think.' Married, you'll drop into
the infinitude of the ridiculous! Bachelor, you can make your own
happiness; you enjoy some to-day, you do without it to-morrow;
married, you must take it as it comes; and the day you want it you
will have to go without it. Marry, and you'll grow a blockhead; you'll
calculate dowries; you'll talk morality, public and religious; you'll
think young men immoral and dangerous; in short, you'll become a
social academician. It's pitiable! The old bachelor whose property the
heirs are waiting for, who fights to his last breath with his nurse
for a spoonful of drink, is blest in comparison with a married man.
I'm not speaking of all that will happen to annoy, bore, irritate,
coerce, oppose, tyrannize, narcotize, paralyze, and idiotize a man in
marriage, in that struggle of two beings always in one another's
presence, bound forever, who have coupled each other under the strange
impression that they were suited. No, to tell you those things would
be merely a repetition of Boileau, and we know him by heart. Still,
I'll forgive your absurd idea if you will promise me to marry "en
grand seigneur"; to entail your property; to have two legitimate
children, to give your wife a house and household absolutely distinct
from yours; to meet her only in society, and never to return from a
journey without sending her a courier to announce it. Two hundred
thousand francs a year will suffice for such a life and your
antecedents will enable you to marry some rich English woman hungry
for a title. That's an aristocratic life which seems to me thoroughly
French; the only life in which we can retain the respect and
friendship of a woman; the only life which distinguishes a man from
the present crowd,--in short, the only life for which a young man
should even think of resigning his bachelor blessings. Thus
established, the Comte de Manerville may advise his epoch, place
himself above the world, and be nothing less than a minister or an
ambassador. Ridicule can never touch him; he has gained the social
advantages of marriage while keeping all the privileges of a
bachelor."

"But, my good friend, I am not de Marsay; I am plainly, as you
yourself do me the honor to say, Paul de Manerville, worthy father and
husband, deputy of the Centre, possibly peer of France,--a destiny
extremely commonplace; but I am modest and I resign myself."

"Yes, but your wife," said the pitiless de Marsay, "will she resign
herself?"

"My wife, my dear fellow, will do as I wish."

"Ah! my poor friend, is that where you are? Adieu, Paul. Henceforth, I
refuse to respect you. One word more, however, for I cannot agree
coldly to your abdication. Look and see in what the strength of our
position lies. A bachelor with only six thousand francs a year
remaining to him has at least his reputation for elegance and the
memory of success. Well, even that fantastic shadow has enormous value
in it. Life still offers many chances to the unmarried man. Yes, he
can aim at anything. But marriage, Paul, is the social 'Thus far shalt
thou go and no farther.' Once married you can never be anything but
what you then are--unless your wife should deign to care for you."

"But," said Paul, "you are crushing me down with exceptional theories.
I am tired of living for others; of having horses merely to exhibit
them; of doing all things for the sake of what may be said of them; of
wasting my substance to keep fools from crying out: 'Dear, dear! Paul
is still driving the same carriage. What has he done with his fortune?
Does he squander it? Does he gamble at the Bourse? No, he's a
millionaire. Madame such a one is mad about him. He sent to England
for a harness which is certainly the handsomest in all Paris. The
four-horse equipages of Messieurs de Marsay and de Manerville were
much noticed at Longchamps; the harness was perfect'--in short, the
thousand silly things with which a crowd of idiots lead us by the
nose. Believe me, my dear Henri, I admire your power, but I don't envy
it. You know how to judge of life; you think and act as a statesman;
you are able to place yourself above all ordinary laws, received
ideas, adopted conventions, and acknowledged prejudices; in short, you
can grasp the profits of a situation in which I should find nothing
but ill-luck. Your cool, systematic, possibly true deductions are, to
the eyes of the masses, shockingly immoral. I belong to the masses. I
must play my game of life according to the rules of the society in
which I am forced to live. While putting yourself above all human
things on peaks of ice, you still have feelings; but as for me, I
should freeze to death. The life of that great majority, to which I
belong in my commonplace way, is made up of emotions of which I now
have need. Often a man coquets with a dozen women and obtains none.
Then, whatever be his strength, his cleverness, his knowledge of the
world, he undergoes convulsions, in which he is crushed as between two
gates. For my part, I like the peaceful chances and changes of life; I
want that wholesome existence in which we find a woman always at our
side."

"A trifle indecorous, your marriage!" exclaimed de Marsay.

Paul was not to be put out of countenance, and continued: "Laugh if
you like; I shall feel myself a happy man when my valet enters my room
in the morning and says: 'Madame is awaiting monsieur for breakfast';
happier still at night, when I return to find a heart--"

"Altogether indecorous, my dear Paul. You are not yet moral enough to
marry."

"--a heart in which to confide my interests and my secrets. I wish to
live in such close union with a woman that our affection shall not
depend upon a yes or a no, or be open to the disillusions of love. In
short, I have the necessary courage to become, as you say, a worthy
husband and father. I feel myself fitted for family joys; I wish to
put myself under the conditions prescribed by society; I desire to
have a wife and children."

"You remind me of a hive of honey-bees! But go your way, you'll be a
dupe all your life. Ha, ha! you wish to marry to have a wife! In other
words, you wish to solve satisfactorily to your own profit the most
difficult problem invented by those bourgeois morals which were
created by the French Revolution; and, what is more, you mean to begin
your attempt by a life of retirement. Do you think your wife won't
crave the life you say you despise? Will _she_ be disgusted with it, as
you are? If you won't accept the noble conjugality just formulated for
your benefit by your friend de Marsay, listen, at any rate, to his
final advice. Remain a bachelor for the next thirteen years; amuse
yourself like a lost soul; then, at forty, on your first attack of
gout, marry a widow of thirty-six. Then you may possibly be happy. If
you now take a young girl to wife, you'll die a madman."

"Ah ca! tell me why!" cried Paul, somewhat piqued.

"My dear fellow," replied de Marsay, "Boileau's satire against women
is a tissue of poetical commonplaces. Why shouldn't women have
defects? Why condemn them for having the most obvious thing in human
nature? To my mind, the problem of marriage is not at all at the point
where Boileau puts it. Do you suppose that marriage is the same thing
as love, and that being a man suffices to make a wife love you? Have
you gathered nothing in your boudoir experience but pleasant memories?
I tell you that everything in our bachelor life leads to fatal errors
in the married man unless he is a profound observer of the human
heart. In the happy days of his youth a man, by the caprice of our
customs, is always lucky; he triumphs over women who are all ready to
be triumphed over and who obey their own desires. One thing after
another--the obstacles created by the laws, the sentiments and natural
defences of women--all engender a mutuality of sensations which
deceives superficial persons as to their future relations in marriage,
where obstacles no longer exist, where the wife submits to love
instead of permitting it, and frequently repulses pleasure instead of
desiring it. Then, the whole aspect of a man's life changes. The
bachelor, who is free and without a care, need never fear repulsion;
in marriage, repulsion is almost certain and irreparable. It may be
possible for a lover to make a woman reverse an unfavorable decision,
but such a change, my dear Paul, is the Waterloo of husbands. Like
Napoleon, the husband is thenceforth condemned to victories which, in
spite of their number, do not prevent the first defeat from crushing
him. The woman, so flattered by the perseverance, so delighted with
the ardor of a lover, calls the same things brutality in a husband.
You, who talk of marrying, and who will marry, have you ever meditated
on the Civil Code? I myself have never muddied my feet in that hovel
of commentators, that garret of gossip, called the Law-school. I have
never so much as opened the Code; but I see its application on the
vitals of society. The Code, my dear Paul, makes woman a ward; it
considers her a child, a minor. Now how must we govern children? By
fear. In that one word, Paul, is the curb of the beast. Now, feel your
own pulse! Have you the strength to play the tyrant,--you, so gentle,
so kind a friend, so confiding; you, at whom I have laughed, but whom
I love, and love enough to reveal to you my science? For this is
science. Yes, it proceeds from a science which the Germans are already
calling Anthropology. Ah! if I had not already solved the mystery of
life by pleasure, if I had not a profound antipathy for those who
think instead of act, if I did not despise the ninnies who are silly
enough to believe in the truth of a book, when the sands of the
African deserts are made of the ashes of I know not how many unknown
and pulverized Londons, Romes, Venices, and Parises, I would write a
book on modern marriages made under the influence of the Christian
system, and I'd stick a lantern on that heap of sharp stones among
which lie the votaries of the social 'multiplicamini.' But the
question is, Does humanity require even an hour of my time? And
besides, isn't the more reasonable use of ink that of snaring hearts
by writing love-letters?--Well, shall you bring the Comtesse de
Manerville here, and let us see her?"

"Perhaps," said Paul.

"We shall still be friends," said de Marsay.

"If--" replied Paul.

"Don't be uneasy; we will treat you politely, as Maison-Rouge treated
the English at Fontenoy."



CHAPTER II

THE PINK OF FASHION

Though the foregoing conversation affected the Comte de Manerville
somewhat, he made it a point of duty to carry out his intentions, and
he returned to Bordeaux during the winter of the year 1821.

The expenses he incurred in restoring and furnishing his family
mansion sustained the reputation for elegance which had preceded him.
Introduced through his former connections to the royalist society of
Bordeaux, to which he belonged as much by his personal opinions as by
his name and fortune, he soon obtained a fashionable pre-eminence. His
knowledge of life, his manners, his Parisian acquirements enchanted
the Faubourg Saint-Germain of Bordeaux. An old marquise made use of a
term formerly in vogue at court to express the flowery beauty of the
fops and beaux of the olden time, whose language and demeanor were
social laws: she called him "the pink of fashion." The liberal clique
caught up the word and used it satirically as a nickname, while the
royalist party continued to employ it in good faith.

Paul de Manerville acquitted himself gloriously of the obligations
imposed by his flowery title. It happened to him, as to many a
mediocre actor, that the day when the public granted him their full
attention he became, one may almost say, superior. Feeling at his
ease, he displayed the fine qualities which accompanied his defects.
His wit had nothing sharp or bitter in it; his manners were not
supercilious; his intercourse with women expressed the respect they
like,--it was neither too deferential, nor too familiar; his foppery
went no farther than a care for his personal appearance which made him
agreeable; he showed consideration for rank; he allowed young men a
certain freedom, to which his Parisian experience assigned due limits;
though skilful with sword and pistol, he was noted for a feminine
gentleness for which others were grateful. His medium height and
plumpness (which had not yet increased into obesity, an obstacle to
personal elegance) did not prevent his outer man from playing the part
of a Bordelais Brummell. A white skin tinged with the hues of health,
handsome hands and feet, blue eyes with long lashes, black hair,
graceful motions, a chest voice which kept to its middle tones and
vibrated in the listener's heart, harmonized well with his sobriquet.
Paul was indeed that delicate flower which needs such careful culture,
the qualities of which display themselves only in a moist and suitable
soil,--a flower which rough treatment dwarfs, which the hot sun burns,
and a frost lays low. He was one of those men made to receive
happiness, rather than to give it; who have something of the woman in
their nature, wishing to be divined, understood, encouraged; in short,
a man to whom conjugal love ought to come as a providence.