“As a proprietor of newspapers and reviews of old standing, you are not bound to know that,” said Blondet.
“There are women,” Bixiou gravely resumed, “and for that matter, men too, who can cut their lives in two and give away but one-half. (Remark how I word my phrase for you in humanitarian language.) For these, all material interests lie without the range of sentiment. They give their time, their life, their honor to a woman, and hold that between themselves it is not the thing to meddle with bits of tissue paper bearing the legend, ‘Forgery is punishable with death.’ And equally they will take nothing from a woman. Yes, the whole thing is debased if fusion of interests follows on fusion of souls. This is a doctrine much preached, and very seldom practised.”
“Oh, what rubbish!” cried Blondet. “The Marechal de Richelieu understood something of gallantry, and he settled an allowance of a thousand louis d’or on Mme. de la Popeliniere after that affair of the hiding-place behind the hearth. Agnes Sorel, in all simplicity, took her fortune to Charles VII., and the King accepted it. Jacques Coeur kept the crown for France; he was allowed to do it, and woman-like, France was ungrateful.”
“Gentlemen,” said Bixiou, “a love that does not imply an indissoluble friendship, to my thinking, is momentary libertinage. What sort of entire surrender is it that keeps something back? Between these two diametrically opposed doctrines, the one as profoundly immoral as the other, there is no possible compromise. It seems to me that any shrinking from a complete union is surely due to a belief that the union cannot last, and if so, farewell to illusion. The passion that does not believe that it will last for ever is a hideous thing. (Here is pure unadulterated Fenelon for you!) At the same time, those who know the world, the observer, the man of the world, the wearers of irreproachable gloves and ties, the men who do not blush to marry a woman for her money, proclaim the necessity of a complete separation of sentiment and interest. The other sort are lunatics that love and imagine that they and the woman they love are the only two beings in the world; for them millions are dirt; the glove or the camellia flower that She wore is worth millions. If the squandered filthy lucre is never to be found again in their possession, you find the remains of floral relics hoarded in dainty cedar-wood boxes. They cannot distinguish themselves one from the other; for them there is no ‘I’ left. Thou—that is their Word made flesh. What can you do? Can you stop the course of this ‘hidden disease of the heart’? There are fools that love without calculation and wise men that calculate while they love.”
“To my thinking Bixiou is sublime,” cried Blondet. “What does Finot say to it?”
“Anywhere else,” said Finot, drawing himself up in his cravat, “anywhere else, I should say, with the ‘gentlemen’; but here, I think——”
“With the scoundrelly scapegraces with whom you have the honor to associate?” said Bixiou.
“Upon my word, yes.”
“And you?” asked Bixiou, turning to Couture.
“Stuff and nonsense!” cried Couture. “The woman that will not make a stepping-stone of her body, that the man she singles out may reach his goal, is a woman that has no heart except for her own purposes.”