“It is plain and simple,” I continue. “It consists in remaining lovers when you are husband and wife.”
“Indeed,” said Emile, laughing at my secret, “we shall not find that hard.”
“Perhaps you will find it harder than you think. Pray give me time to explain.
“Cords too tightly stretched are soon broken. This is what happens when the marriage bond is subjected to too great a strain. The fidelity imposed by it upon husband and wife is the most sacred of all rights; but it gives to each too great a power over the other. Constraint and love do not agree together, and pleasure is not to be had for the asking. Do not blush, Sophy, and do not try to run away. God forbid that I should offend your modesty! But your fate for life is at stake. For so great a cause, permit a conversation between your husband and your father which you would not permit elsewhere.
“It is not so much possession as mastery of which people tire, and affection is often more prolonged with regard to a mistress than a wife. How can people make a duty of the tenderest caresses, and a right of the sweetest pledges of love? It is mutual desire which gives the right, and nature knows no other. The law may restrict this right, it cannot extend it. The pleasure is so sweet in itself! Should it owe to sad constraint the power which it cannot gain from its own charms? No, my children, in marriage the hearts are bound, but the bodies are not enslaved. You owe one another fidelity, but not complaisance. Neither of you may give yourself to another, but neither of you belongs to the other except at your own will.
“If it is true, dear Emile, that you would always be your wife’s lover, that she should always be your mistress and her own, be a happy but respectful lover; obtain all from love and nothing from duty, and let the slightest favours never be of right but of grace. I know that modesty shuns formal confessions and requires to be overcome; but with delicacy and true love, will the lover ever be mistaken as to the real will? Will not he know when heart and eyes grant what the lips refuse? Let both for ever be master of their person and their caresses, let them have the right to bestow them only at their own will. Remember that even in marriage this pleasure is only lawful when the desire is mutual. Do not be afraid, my children, that this law will keep you apart; on the contrary, it will make both more eager to please, and will prevent satiety. True to one another, nature and love will draw you to each other.”
Emile is angry and cries out against these and similar suggestions. Sophy is ashamed, she hides her face behind her fan and says nothing. Perhaps while she is saying nothing, she is the most annoyed. Yet I insist, without mercy; I make Emile blush for his lack of delicacy; I undertake to be surety for Sophy that she will undertake her share of the treaty. I incite her to speak, you may guess she will not dare to say I am mistaken. Emile anxiously consults the eyes of his young wife; he beholds them, through all her confusion, filled with a, voluptuous anxiety which reassures him against the dangers of trusting her. He flings himself at her feet, kisses with rapture the hand extended to him, and swears that beyond the fidelity he has already promised, he will renounce all other rights over her. “My dear wife,” said he, “be the arbiter of my pleasures as you are already the arbiter of my life and fate. Should your cruelty cost me life itself I would yield to you my most cherished rights. I will owe nothing to your complaisance, but all to your heart.”
Dear Emile, be comforted; Sophy herself is too generous to let you fall a victim to your generosity.
In the evening, when I am about to leave them, I say in the most solemn tone, “Remember both of you, that you are free, that there is no question of marital rights; believe me, no false deference. Emile will you come home with me? Sophy permits it.” Emile is ready to strike me in his anger. “And you, Sophy, what do you say? Shall I take him away?” The little liar, blushing, answers, “Yes.” A tender and delightful falsehood, better than truth itself!
The next day. ... Men no longer delight in the picture of bliss; their taste is as much depraved by the corruption of vice as their hearts. They can no longer feel what is touching or perceive what is truly delightful. You who, as a picture of voluptuous joys, see only the happy lovers immersed in pleasure, your picture is very imperfect; you have only its grosser part, the sweetest charms of pleasure are not there. Which of you has seen a young couple, happily married, on the morrow of their marriage? their chaste yet languid looks betray the intoxication of the bliss they have enjoyed, the blessed security of innocence, and the delightful certainty that they will spend the rest of their life together. The heart of man can behold no more rapturous sight; this is the real picture of happiness; you have beheld it a hundred times without heeding it; your hearts are so hard that you cannot love it. Sophy, peaceful and happy, spends the day in the arms of her tender mother; a pleasant resting place, after a night spent in the arms of her husband.