University of Virginia Library

10. CHAPTER X.

"THAT, then, was the way in which I was
captured. I was in love, as it is called; not only
did she appear to me a perfect being, but I con-
sidered myself a white blackbird. It is a com-
monplace fact that there is no one so low in the
world that he cannot find some one viler than
himself, and consequently puff with pride and
self-contentment. I was in that situation. I did
not marry for money. Interest was foreign to
the affair, unlike the marriages of most of my
acquaintances, who married either for money or
for relations. First, I was rich, she was poor.

Second, I was especially proud of the fact that,
while others married with an intention of con-
tinuing their polygamic life as bachelors, it was
my firm intention to live monogamically after
my engagement and the wedding, and my pride
swelled immeasurably.

"Yes, I was a wretch, convinced that I was
an angel. The period of my engagement did not
last long. I cannot remember those days with-
out shame. What an abomination!

"It is generally agreed that love is a moral
sentiment, a community of thought rather than
of sense. If that is the case, this community of
thought ought to find expression in words and
conversation. Nothing of the sort. It was ex-
tremely difficult for us to talk with each other.

What a toil of Sisyphus was our conversation!

Scarcely had we thought of something to say,
and said it, when we had to r
sum our silence
and try to discover new subjects. Literally, we
did not know what to say to each other. All
that we could think of concerning the life that
was before us and our home was said.

"And then what? If we had been animals,
we should have known that we had not to talk.

But here, on the contrary, it was necessary to
talk, and there were no resources! For that
which occupied our minds was not a thing to be
expressed in words.

"And then that silly custom of eating bon-
bons, that brutal gluttony for sweetmeats, those
abominable preparations for the wedding, those
discussions with mamma upon the apartments,
upon the sleeping-rooms, upon the bedding,
upon the morning-gowns, upon the wrappers,
the linen, the costumes! Understand that if
people married according to the old fashion, as
this old man said just now, then these eider-
down coverlets and this bedding would all be
sacred details; but with us, out of ten married
people there is scarcely to be found one who, I
do not say believes in sacraments (whether he
believes or not is a matter of indifference to us),
but believes in what he promises. Out of a
hundred men, there is scarcely one who has not
married before, and out of fifty scarcely one
who has not made up his mind to deceive his
wife.

"The great majority look upon this journey
to the church as a condition necessary to the

possession of a certain woman. Think then of
the supreme significance which material details
must take on. Is it not a sort of sale, in which
a maiden is given over to a
débauché, the sale
being surrounded with the most agreeable de-
tails?