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PREFACE
BECAUSE OF THE TITLE
I have never written prefaces to my novels; I have always considered what an author says in a preface, what he therein explains beforehand to the reader, as utterly useless. The reader would be entitled to reply, as Alceste replies to Orontes: “We shall see.”
Nor have I ever supposed that the public read a novel in order to talk with its author. It matters little to my readers, I presume, whether I am young or old, short or tall, whether I write in the morning or at night; what they want is a work that pleases them, in which there is enough of truth to enable them to identify themselves with the characters; and if the author constantly talks of himself and stations himself between his heroes and his reader, it seems to me that he destroys the illusion and injures his own work.
My reason for placing a preface at the head of this book has to do with the title—that title which has caused persons to recoil in dismay who do not balk at executioners, damned, tortured, guillotined, and other pleasant conceits in which authors indulge without objection. I propose, not to justify myself, for I do not think myself guilty, but to reassure some of my readers of the gentler sex, whom my title might alarm beyond measure.
Le Cocu! What is there so indecent in the word, pray? In the first place, what does it mean? A married man who is deceived by his wife, a husband whose wife is unfaithful. Would you like me to give my book such a title as The Husband whose Wife was False to Her Vows? That would resemble a Pontoise poster. Was it not clearer and simpler to take the one word which, alone, means all that?
You might have called it the Predestined, someone may say. My answer to that is that that title would have been excellent for those who understood it, but that very many people would never have guessed that it meant cuckold; that everybody is not familiar with such conventional language, and that I write to be understood by everybody.
But, after all, why enter upon such a crusade against a word so often and so happily employed on the stage? Who does not know that the immortal Molière called one of his plays The Imaginary Cuckold? I have seen that play acted, and consequently advertised in the streets of Paris, less than three years ago—at a time, however, when we permitted ourselves many fewer liberties than at present; and yet I saw no one draw back with horror or disgust, or indulge in any of these indignant, nervous outbursts on reading the poster of the Théâtre-Français on which the announcement of The Imaginary Cuckold was printed. I think, however, that we should be more strict with respect to what is said on the stage, than with respect to what is put in a novel; for, if I take my daughter to the play, and if the characters make unseemly remarks, I cannot prevent my daughter from hearing them; whereas it is a very easy matter for me to prevent her reading a novel in which such things are expressed.
But I repeat, the word cuckold should raise a laugh, and that is all. Is not that the effect which it produces at the theatre?
“Aye, this is very fine; my children will be gentlemen,
but I shall be a cuckold unless I look to it.”
(George Dandin, Act I.)