The Secret of Married Life
"In the first place, my dear child, the cause of the failure of
married women who desire to keep their husbands' hearts--and," she
said, making a parenthesis, "to keep their hearts and rule them is one
and the same thing--Well, the principle cause of conjugal disunion is
to be found in perpetual intercourse, which never existed in the olden
time, but which has been introduced into this country of late years
with the mania for family. Since the Revolution the manners and
customs of the bourgeois have invaded the homes of the aristocracy.
This misfortune is due to one of their writers, Rousseau, an infamous
heretic, whose ideas were all anti-social and who pretended, I don't
know how, to justify the most senseless things. He declared that all
women had the same rights and the same faculties; that living in a
state of society we ought, nevertheless, to obey nature--as if the
wife of a Spanish grandee, as if you or I had anything in common with
the women of the people! Since then, well-bred women have suckled
their children, have educated their daughters, and stayed in their own
homes. Life has become so involved that happiness is almost
impossible,--for a perfect harmony between natures such as that which
has made you and me live as two friends is an exception. Perpetual
contact is as dangerous for parents and children as it is for husband
and wife. There are few souls in which love survives this fatal
omnipresence. Therefore, I say, erect between yourself and Paul the
barriers of society; go to balls and operas; go out in the morning,
dine out in the evenings, pay visits constantly, and grant but little
of your time to your husband. By this means you will always keep your
value to him. When two beings bound together for life have nothing to
live upon but sentiment, its resources are soon exhausted,
indifference, satiety, and disgust succeed. When sentiment has
withered what will become of you? Remember, affection once
extinguished can lead to nothing but indifference or contempt. Be ever
young and ever new to him. He may weary you,--that often happens,--but
you must never weary him. The faculty of being bored without showing
it is a condition of all species of power. You cannot diversify
happiness by the cares of property or the occupations of a family. If
you do not make your husband share your social interests, if you do
not keep him amused you will fall into a dismal apathy. Then begins
the SPLEEN of love. But a man will always love the woman who amuses
him and keeps him happy. To give happiness and to receive it are two
lines of feminine conduct which are separated by a gulf."
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