Even without supposing an excessive lust in the woman; even if you have been so fortunate as to have found one with more heart than feelings; she will believe she is no longer loved, and in the secret silence of the night-watches will shed tears, measuring your love by the early change in the broken music. Notwithstanding what I have written of genital hygiene; notwithstanding that others have followed me in the same road, throwing down the walls which supported the ignorance of the things of love; women are still too often most ignorant, and measure love by the notes of music.[3] Think then on the future, which comes quickly, and like a hungry dog devours the miserable present, and from the very first days begin with an andante moderato, and if your means permit, go even to the allegretto; but for charity’s sake do not proceed to quavers and semi-quavers.
[3] Whilst writing this, a courageous book on this subject has appeared in Germany: “Der Kampf der Geschlechter, eine Studie aus dem Leben, und für das Leben.” (The Struggle of the Sexes. A Study from Life and for Life).—Leipzig, 1892. A volume of 173 pp. It is written by a woman already noted in the literary world in Germany, who has published several novels under the fictitious name of Franz von Wemmorsdorf.
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I find I am treading on the field of the hygiene of matrimony, whilst I ought only to speak of what precedes it. Without making the experiment of the savages, you would like to know to a nicety the strength of the appetite for love which your future companion feels? Well, then, begin to study her family and, above all, her mother, who bequeaths her nervous system to her children, with all its accompaniments and connections, with sensibility, chastity, or debauchery. Nothing is more hereditary than the capacity for love, and I have under my eyes terrible examples of calamities, which occurred from a study of the fiancée alone, without any thought of her father and mother.
I myself advised a dear friend of mine to marry a young girl who appeared to be, and had been up to that time, the goddess of modesty, the angel of chastity; I wrote my milla osta on the passport of my friend, and he, who was good enough to believe me a great specialist in this abstruse matter, embarked trustfully and happily on the tempestuous sea of matrimony. Alas! after a few months the goddess of modesty had become a Mepalura!—I had forgotten to inquire after the temperament of her father and mother.
Having made the hereditary inquiry, and found the young lady with a clean bill of health, you must study her.
On an equality with other conditions, if you desire a tranquil and not exacting wife, seek these elements in her:
Light hair, blue eyes, fairly stout, a calm expression, natural movements, little or no nervousness, lips rather thin, no protuberance of the upper lip. Great love of children, a sure sign of a great development of the sentiment of maternity, which is the most powerful restraint on exaggerated desires of the flesh.
If, on the contrary, you desire an ardent woman, you will more easily find her with black eyes and hair, dark skin, tumid and thickish lips, a thin frame. She will be nervous, very sensitive, of a capricious character, she will have glances of fire and snakelike movements.
All these physical and moral lineaments are very gross, and only have value as general observations, such as one reads on passports, equally suited to a hundred different people. I myself must make a criticism on these two examples of mine although they are taken from life, and are the result of many repeated observations. As regards the blonde and brunette I ought, for example, to make you at once aware that I mean to speak of those nations in which there is a great mixture of ethnic types, which gives us in the same city, in the same village, women with light, chestnut-coloured or black hair. Where all are light, or all are dark, we still find women of ice and of fire, without any change in the colour of their skin or hair.