"Only extreme things are tolerable." Count Robert de Montesquiou.
I. MADAME CLARENCE'S DRAWING-ROOM
Madame Clarence, the widow of an exalted functionary of the Republic, loved to
entertain. Every Thursday she collected together some friends of modest
condition who took pleasure in conversation. The ladies who went to see her,
very different in age and rank, were all without money, and had all suffered
much. There was a duchess who looked like a fortune-teller and a
fortune-teller who looked like a duchess. Madame Clarence was pretty enough to
maintain some old liaisons, but not to form new ones, and she generally
inspired a quiet esteem. She had a very pretty daughter, who, since she had no
dower, caused some alarm among the male guests; for the Penguins were as much
afraid of portionless girls as they were of the devil himself. Eveline
Clarence, noticing their reserve and perceiving its cause, used to hand them
their tea with an air of disdain. Moreover, she seldom appeared at the parties
and talked only to the ladies or the very young people. Her discreet and
retiring presence put no restraint upon the conversation, since those who took
part in it thought either that as she was a young girl she would not
understand it, or that, being twenty-five years old, she might listen to
everything.
One Thursday therefore, in Madame Clarence's drawing-room, the conversation
turned upon love. The ladies spoke of it with pride, delicacy, and mystery,
the men with discretion and fatuity; everyone took an interest in the
conversation, for each one was interested in what he or she said. A great deal
of wit flowed; brilliant apostrophes were launched forth and keen repartees
were returned. But when Professor Haddi began to speak he overwhelmed
everybody.
"It is the same with our ideas on love as with our ideas on everything else,"
said he, "they rest upon anterior habits whose very memory has been effaced.
In morals, the limitations that have lost their grounds for existing, the most
useless obligations, the cruelest and most injurious restraints, are because
of their profound antiquity and the mystery of their origin, the least
disputed and the least disputable as well as the most respected, and they are
those that cannot be violated without incurring the most severe blame. All
morality relative to the relations of the sexes is founded on this principle:
that a woman once obtained belongs to the man, that she is his property like
his horse or his weapons. And this having ceased to be true, absurdities
result from it, such as the marriage or contract of sale of a woman to a man,
with clauses restricting the right of ownership introduced as a consequence of
the gradual diminution of the claims of the possessor.
"The obligation imposed on a girl that she should bring her virginity to her
husband comes from the times when girls were married immediately they were of
a marriageable age. It is ridiculous that a girl who marries at twenty-five or
thirty should be subject to that obligation. You will, perhaps, say that it is
a present with which her husband, if she gets one at last, will be gratified;
but every moment we see men wooing married women and showing themselves
perfectly satisfied to take them as they find them.
"Still, even in our own day, the duty of girls is determined in religious
morality by the old belief that God, the most powerful of warriors, is
polygamous, that he has reserved all maidens for himself, and that men can
only take those whom he has left. This belief, although traces of it exist in
several metaphors of mysticism, is abandoned to-day, by most civilised
peoples. However, it still dominates the education of girls not only among our
believers, but even among our free-thinkers, who, as a rule, think freely for
the reason that they do not think at all.
"Discretion means ability to separate and discern. We say that a girl is
discreet when she knows nothing at all. We cultivate her ignorance. In spite
of all our care the most discreet know something, for we cannot conceal from
them their own nature and their own sensations. But they know badly, they know
in a wrong way. That is all we obtain by our careful education. . . ."
"Sir," suddenly said Joseph Boutourle, the High Treasurer of Alca, "believe
me, there are innocent girls, perfectly innocent girls, and it is a great
pity. I have known three. They married, and the result was tragical."
"I have noticed," Professor Haddock went on, "that Europeans in general and
Penguins in particular occupy themselves, after sport and motoring, with
nothing so much as with love. It is giving a great deal of importance to a
matter that has very little weight."
"Then, Professor," exclaimed Madame Cremeur in a choking voice, "when a woman
has completely surrendered herself to you, you think it is a matter of no
importance?"
"No, Madame; it can have its importance," answered Professor Haddock, "but it
is necessary to examine if when she surrenders herself to us she offers us a
delicious fruit-garden or a plot of thistles and dandelions. And then, do we
not misuse words? In love, a woman lends herself rather than gives herself.
Look at the pretty Madame Pensee. . . ."
"She is my mother," said a tall, fair young man.
"Sir, I have the greatest respect for her," replied Professor Haddock; "do not
be afraid that I intend to say anything in the least offensive about her. But
allow me to tell you that, as a rule, the opinions of sons about their mothers
are not to be relied on. They do not bear enough in mind that a mother is a
mother only because she loved, and that she can still love. That, however, is
the case, and it would be deplorable were it otherwise. I have noticed, on the
contrary, that daughters do not deceive themselves about their mothers'
faculty for loving or about the use they make of it; they are rivals; they
have their eyes upon them."
The insupportable Professor spoke a great deal longer, adding indecorum to
awkwardness, and impertinence to incivility, accumulating incongruities,
despising what is respectable, respecting what is despicable; but no one
listened to him further.
During this time in a room that was simple without grace, a room sad for the
want of love, a room which, like all young girls' rooms, had something of the
cold atmosphere of a place of waiting about it, Eveline Clarence turned over
the pages of club annuals and prospectuses of charities in order to obtain
from them some acquaintance with society. Being convinced that her mother,
shut up in her own intellectual but poor world, could neither bring her out or
push her into prominence, she decided that she herself would seek the best
means of winning a husband. At once calm and obstinate, without dreams or
illusions, and regarding marriage as but a ticket of admission or a passport,
she kept before her mind a clear notion of the hazards, difficulties, and
chances of her enterprise. She had the art of pleasing and a coldness of
temperament that enabled her to turn it to its fullest advantage. Her weakness
lay in the fact that she was dazzled by anything that had an aristocratic air.
When she was alone with her mother she said:
"Mamma, we will go to-morrow to Father Douillard's retreat."
Read next: BOOK VII - MODERN TIMES#CHAPTER II - THE CHARITY OF ST. ORBEROSIA
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