J. B.—“Her cleverness will cease to strike you, when you have lived with her a little while.”
Monsieur.—“An excellent pianist.”
J. B.—“Before six months are over, you will know all her pieces by heart.... There is nothing serious about all these things. Marriage improves a woman’s position from a social point of view; a man is wrong who does not take care that it improves his, from a financial point of view.”
Monsieur.—“I am no speculator.”
J. B.—“Neither am I, and this is the very reason why I like the Three per Cents. Beauty fades, ephemeral charms disappear, and solid qualities remain. Girls that have money want to be married as well as those that have none; it would be unfair, my dear boy, to pass them over, because they have money. Your Balzac says that a man who sets foot in his wife’s dressing-room is either a philosopher or a fool. I go further than Balzac, and maintain that a man who marries must be a philosopher or a fool, unless he takes advantage of it to improve his position. You speak of love, my dear fellow, but matrimony is the very profanation of love. It is only in Eastern countries that love and woman are properly understood. It is habit that kills love; in the East, women are slaves that do not live with men from morning to night: they appear before their husbands only from time to time, and exhaling the most exquisite perfumes. But, in Europe, upon my word, they believe themselves their husbands’ equals.... In England, they take cheese and stout before going to bed. You see them with their heads covered with curls, and you think how pretty they look, don’t you? But, my dear innocent fellow, don’t you know that to obtain those lovely curls, the sweet creatures must go to bed with their heads loaded with waving-pins and curl-papers? Yes ... it is thus that your wife will probably adorn herself for the night in order to be beautiful ... not for you at the moment, but for other people, you perhaps included, on the morrow. On the morrow, mark you, my boy! When you have undergone this kind of treatment for a few months—I give you twelve, if you are a good diplomatist—you will penetrate into your wife’s apartment with about as much emotion as you would enter the ’bus for the Bank. No, matrimony is dinner without dessert; no little delicacies, no luxuries: a continual, eternal, sempiternal pot-au-feu.... Respect, esteem, if you like....”
Monsieur.—“Whose fault is that, my dear Mr. Bull? A woman is what her husband makes her; it is Balzac who says that too. In love, as in cookery, you have but one sauce.... It is possible to respect a woman, and at the same time to be in love with her: respect and esteem are the daily bread of matrimony; but a little honey on it now and then does no harm.”
J. B.—“Moonshine—childishness—nonsense—my dear sir!”
Monsieur.—“Call it nonsense and childishness, as much as you like; but happiness is made up of all kinds of nonsense, abandon—a word, by-the-bye, for which you have no equivalent in English—hearty laughter, good kisses and the like; such nonsenses have a far more pleasant sound to my ear than the sacred bonds of matrimony, the gravity of family life....”
J. B.—“Mon cher ami, it is easy to see that you come from a frivolous country, where the women lead the men by the nose....”
Monsieur.—“And the men enjoy it.”