No divorce! The woman who has given herself away, has received the imprint of man. You should not abandon her, however guilty she may be. I thought in the beginning that after your death she ought to wear mourning to the tomb, beyond which, she and her husband would be fused into the unity of love. But I have thought better of it; you may appoint a successor.
While Michelet is seating himself, wiping his eyes, the lid of a coffin is seen to rise, and Comte exclaims in a sepulchral tone:
Worthily and admirably spoken, illustrious professor!
What! you here? exclaims the assembly. Then one does not perish entirely, as you taught your disciples?
COMTE. No, gentlemen, and I was very agreeably surprised to see myself mistaken. But it is not to instruct you about the life beyond the tomb that I return; that would not have been worth the trouble of disturbing myself. It is to express to the great professor Michelet all the satisfaction that I feel in seeing him so richly poetise the ideal that I set up, and strew so many flowers over the admirable maxim of Aristotle and the commandment of the great St. Paul.
Yes, thrice illustrious Master, you have rightly said: woman is made for man, she should obey him, be devoted to him; she is only a doll in private life, absolutely nothing in public life. Yes, men should labor for her; yes, marriage is indissoluble; all this is irreproachable.
AUGUSTE COMTISM. I regret but one thing—that you have not preserved the ejaculatory orisons of the wife to the husband, and of the husband to the wife; it would have been a good example and have made a fine effect to see them every morning kneeling face to face, with clasped hands and closed eyes. I hope that this is only forgetfulness, and that you will reëstablish this detail in your next edition. I congratulate you openly on the happy thought that you have conceived of justifying the absorption of woman by man by aid of a wound and the mysteries of impregnation; this will have a great effect on the ignorant.
Rebellious women, and the madmen with corrupt hearts who sustain them, say that you are a poetic and ingenuous egotist, that our beloved Proudhon is a brutal egotist; that I am an egotist by A + B. Let them say so; I approve and bless you."
The apparition was preparing to lie down again in his coffin when, having a passion for encountering phantoms, I seized a corner of his winding sheet, and, notwithstanding an unequivocal sign from him of vade retro, I had the courage to represent humbly to the defunct high priest that the brow of M. Proudhon deserved quite as much to be blessed as that of M. Michelet. The defunct gravely crossed his fleshless fore finger and thumb over the haughty and irreverent head of the great critic, who neither bowed nor seemed infinitely flattered.
It being his turn to speak, Proudhon rose and said: "Gentlemen Communists, Philadelphians, Fusionists, Phalansterians, Saint Simonians, and you, MM. Girardin and Legouvé, as well as all of your adherents, you are all effeminate, men hardened in absurdity.