Without fear of going far wrong, one may say that in whatever society there are the greatest number of married people, there one will find more morality and decorum, and consequently the number of those who love and nourish their love by seduction, whether it be with the armed hand on the public road, or clandestinely under the form of domestic robbery, will be less.
Besides this, our modern society is suffering from gold fever; a disease which is as old as man himself and has taken the form and course of a real epidemic; this contributes more than any other element to corrupt the roots of marriage.
Diffused instruction and the many social exigencies have increased our needs beyond measure; more especially those which are more costly, that is, those of the intellect and the higher æsthetic emotions, without in any way enlarging the sources of production.
From birth to death, the balance of home life oppresses us, torments us; its arithmetic pierces through the skin with the acute points of its figures, reaches our very viscera and, alas, our hearts also; poisoning every pleasure, spoiling all the holy and happy poetry of life. Invited as all are to the genial table of modern civilization which offers us so many new delights, we are like the poor government official, who, for appearance’s sake, allows himself to be carried off to a ball, and between the bars of music and the full glasses, feels his pocket anxiously, wondering how and when he will be able to pay the score.
With what difficulty some of the money is drawn from the poor purse of a middle-class man! How many pangs has it not caused before it sees the light of day, accompanied by the last caress of the convulsive fingers! How unequal the comparison between those who live on an income of one thousand and three thousand francs! And, from the ever increasing fever of desires, the gnawing of all vanities, and the vanity of the classes, how these figures increase daily until they reach to ten, twenty, or thirty thousand francs!
And this is the reason that whilst love alone should prompt to marriage, it is nearly always the last party in the contract, in which money judges and directs according to the need of it, with all the imperiousness of one who knows himself to be unconquerable.
Money, money, always money! It is the first and supreme arbiter of the greater number of marriages.
To take a wife means to become poor, if the wife does not help to build the new family nest; it means to walk with open eyes into a bottomless and dark abyss; it signifies condemning one’s self to the daily torture of poverty, and to dedicate the children yet unborn to the same struggle.
Our dignity would demand that the wife’s dowry should not enter into our choice at all. The true ideal would be the ability to offer to our companion riches, or, at least, a competency with our heart and hand, so that we could say: