University of Virginia Library

16.
CHAPTER XVI.

"THE children came rapidly, one after an-
other, and there happened what happens in our
society with children and doctors. Yes, children,
maternal love, it is a painful thing. Children,
to a woman of our society, are not a joy, a pride,
nor a fulfilment of her vocation, but a cause of
fear, anxiety, and interminable suffering, tor-
ture. Women say it, they think it, and they feel
it too. Children to them are really a torture, not
because they do not wish to give birth to them,

nurse them, and care for them (women with a
strong maternal instinct—and such was my wife
—are ready to do that), but because the children
may fall sick and die. They do not wish to give
birth to them, and then not love them; and when
they love, they do not wish to feel fear for the
child's health and life. That is why they do not
wish to nurse them. 'If I nurse it,' they say, 'I
shall become too fond of it.' One would think
that they preferred india-rubber children, which
could neither be sick nor die, and could always
be repaired. What an entanglement in the
brains of these poor women! Why such abom-
inations to avoid pregnancy, and to avoid the
love of the little ones?

"Love, the most joyous condition of the soul,
is represented as a danger. And why? Be-
cause, when a man does not live as a man, he is
worse than a beast. A woman cannot look upon
a child otherwise than as a pleasure. It is true
that it is painful to give birth to it, but what
little hands! . . . Oh, the little hands! Oh, the
little feet! Oh, its smile! Oh, its little body!

Oh, its prattle! Oh, its hiccough! In a word,
it is a feeling of animal, sensual maternity. But

as for any idea as to the mysterious significance
of the appearance of a new human being to re-
place us, there is scarcely a sign of it.

"Nothing of it appears in all that is said and
done. No one has any faith now in a baptism
of the child, and yet that was nothing but a
reminder of the human significance of the new-
born babe.

"They have rejected all that, but they have not
replaced it, and there remain only the dresses,
the laces, the little hands, the little feet, and
whatever exists in the animal. But the animal
has neither imagination, nor foresight, nor rea-
son, nor a doctor. No! not even a doctor! The
chicken droops its head, overwhelmed, or the
calf dies; the hen clucks and the cow lows for
a time, and then these beasts continue to live,
forgetting what has happened. With us, if the
child falls sick, what is to be done, how to care
for it, what doctor to call, where to go? If it
dies, there will be no more little hands or little
feet, and then what is the use of the sufferings
endured? The cow does not ask all that, and
this is why children are a source of misery. The
cow has no imagination, and for that reason can-

not think how it might have saved the child if it
had done this or that, and its grief, founded in
its physical being, lasts but a very short time.

It is only a condition, and not that sorrow which
becomes exaggerated to the point of despair,
thanks to idleness and satiety. The cow has not
that reasoning faculty which would enable it to
ask the why. Why endure all these tortures?

What was the use of so much love, if the little
ones were to die? The cow has no logic which
tells it to have no more children, and, if any
come accidentally, to neither love nor nurse
them, that it may not suffer. But our wives
reason, and reason in this way, and that is why
I said that, when a man does not live as a man,
he is beneath the animal."

"But then, how is it necessary to act, in your
opinion, in order to treat children humanly?" I
asked.

"How? Why, love them humanly."

"Well, do not mothers love their children?"

"They do not love them humanly, or very
seldom do, and that is why they do not love
them even as dogs. Mark this, a hen, a goose,
a wolf, will always remain to woman inaccessible

ideals of animal love. It is a rare thing for a
woman to throw herself, at the peril of her life,
upon an elephant to snatch her child away,
whereas a hen or a sparrow will not fail to fly
at a dog and sacrifice itself utterly for its chil-
dren. Observe this, also. Woman has the
power to limit her physical love for her children,
which an animal cannot do. Does that mean that,
because of this, woman is inferior to the animal?

No. She is superior (and even to say superior
is unjust, she is not superior, she is different),
but she has other duties, human duties. She
can restrain herself in the matter of animal love,
and transfer her love to the soul of the child.

That is what woman's
rôle
should be, and that
is precisely what we do not see in our society.

We read of the heroic acts of mothers who sac-
rifice their children in the name of a superior
idea, and these things seem to us like tales of the
ancient world, which do not concern us. And
yet I believe that, if the mother has not some
ideal, in the name of which she can sacrifice the
animal feeling, and if this force finds no employ-
ment, she will transfer it to chimerical attempts
to physically preserve her child, aided in this

task by the doctor, and she will suffer as she
does suffer.

"So it was with my wife. Whether there was
one child or five, the feeling remained the same.

In fact, it was a little better when there had been
five. Life was always poisoned with fear for the
children, not only from their real or imaginary
diseases, but even by their simple presence.

For my part, at least, throughout my conjugal
life, all my interests and all my happiness de-
pended upon the health of my children, their
condition, their studies. Children, it is needless
to say, are a serious consideration; but all ought
to live, and in our days parents can no longer
live. Regular life does not exist for them. The
whole life of the family hangs by a hair. What
a terrible thing it is to suddenly receive the news
that little Basile is vomiting, or that Lise has a
cramp in the stomach! Immediately you aban-
don everything, you forget everything, every-
thing becomes nothing. The essential thing is
the doctor, the enema, the temperature. You
cannot begin a conversation but little Pierre
comes running in with an anxious air to ask if
he may eat an apple, or what jacket he shall put

on, or else it is the servant who enters with a
screaming baby.

"Regular, steady family life does not exist.

Where you live, and consequently what you do,
depends upon the health of the little ones, the
health of the little ones depends upon nobody,
and, thanks to the doctors, who pretend to aid
health, your entire life is disturbed. It is a
perpetual peril. Scarcely do we believe our-
selves out of it when a new danger comes: more
attempts to save. Always the situation of
sailors on a foundering vessel. Sometimes it
seemed to me that this was done on purpose,
that my wife feigned anxiety in order to conquer
me, since that solved the question so simply for
her benefit. It seemed to me that all that she
did at those times was done for its effect upon
me, but now I see that she herself, my wife, suf-
fered and was tortured on account of the little
ones, their health, and their diseases.

"A torture to both of us, but to her the chil-
dren were also a means of forgetting herself,
like an intoxication. I often noticed, when she
was very sad, that she was relieved, when a child
fell sick, at being able to take refuge in this in-

toxication. It was involuntary intoxication, be-
cause as yet there was nothing else. On every
side we heard that Mrs. So-and-so had lost chil-
dren, that Dr. So-and-so had saved the child of
Mrs. So-and-so, and that in a certain family all
had moved from the house in which they were
living, and thereby saved the little ones. And
the doctors, with a serious air, confirmed this,
sustaining my wife in her opinions. She was not
prone to fear, but the doctor dropped some
word, like corruption of the blood, scarlatina, or
else—heaven help us—diphtheria, and off she
went.

"It was impossible for it to be otherwise.

Women in the old days had the belief that 'God
has given, God has taken away,' that the soul of
the little angel is going to heaven, and that it is
better to die innocent than to die in sin. If the
women of to-day had something like this faith,
they could endure more peacefully the sickness
of their children. But of all that there does not
remain even a trace. And yet it is necessary to
believe in something; consequently they stupidly
believe in medicine, and not even in medicine,
but in the doctor. One believes in X, another

in Z, and, like all believers, they do not see the
idiocy of their beliefs. They believe
quia ab-
surdum
, because, in reality, if they did not be-
lieve in a stupid way, they would see the vanity
of all that these brigands prescribe for them.

Scarlatina is a contagious disease; so, when one
lives in a large city, half the family has to move
away from its residence (we did it twice), and
yet every man in the city is a centre through
which pass innumerable diameters, carrying
threads of all sorts of contagions. There is no
obstacle: the baker, the tailor, the coachman, the
laundresses.

"And I would undertake, for every man who
moves on account of contagion, to find in his
new dwelling-place another contagion similar, if
not the same.

"But that is not all. Every one knows rich
people who, after a case of diphtheria, destroy
everything in their residences, and then fall sick
in houses newly built and furnished. Every one
knows, likewise, numbers of men who come in
contact with sick people and do not get infected.

Our anxieties are due to the people who cir-
culate tall stories. One woman says that she

has an excellent doctor. 'Pardon me,' answers
the other, 'he killed such a one,' or such a one.

And
vice versa
. Bring her another, who knows
no more, who learned from the same books, who
treats according to the same formulas, but who
goes about in a carriage, and asks a hundred
roubles a visit, and she will have faith in him.

"It all lies in the fact that our women are
savages. They have no belief in God, but some
of them believe in the evil eye, and the others in
doctors who charge high fees. If they had faith
they would know that scarlatina, diphtheria, etc.,
are not so terrible, since they cannot disturb that
which man can and should love,—the soul.

There can result from them only that which
none of us can avoid,—disease and death. With-
out faith in God, they love only physically, and
all their energy is concentrated upon the pres-
ervation of life, which cannot be preserved, and
which the doctors promise the fools of both
sexes to save. And from that time there is noth-
ing to be done; the doctors must be summoned.

"Thus the presence of the children not only
did not improve our relations as husband and
wife, but, on the contrary, disunited us. The

children became an additional cause of dispute,
and the larger they grew, the more they became
an instrument of struggle. One would have said
that we used them as weapons with which to
combat each other. Each of us had his favorite.

I made use of little Basile (the eldest), she of
Lise. Further, when the children reached an
age where their characters began to be defined,
they became allies, which we drew each in his
or her own direction. They suffered horribly
from this, the poor things, but we, in our per-
petual hubbub, were not clear-headed enough to
think of them. The little girl was devoted to
me, but the eldest boy, who resembled my wife,
his favorite, often inspired me with dislike.