The French do not know what Fidelity means, my boy; they have chameleon souls, and remain true to one object only until another comes within their reach. Like mad bulls, they are attracted by the quiescent warmth of fiery-red; and, having attained it, tear it to pieces in their passion.
What can such people know about Love? Nothing. They call Love "L'Amour," and when we speak of a
man's "amours," we mean that he "loves" like a Frenchman. Monsieur Michelet is a Frenchman; and supposing him to be an ordinary one, we must accept his sentiments regarding Woman as we would those of an Apicius regarding a delicacy he apostrophizes before devouring. But Michelet's temperament is poetical, and while he looks upon Woman as a foretaste of the sensualist's paradise, and upon Love as the means of gaining it, he covers up the grossness of his ideas with robes borrowed from the angels. Adopting Kepler's canon, that "harmony is the perfection of relations," he makes Woman, the creature, a continuation of Love, the sentiment; and the tenor of his "L'Amour" and "La Femme" is, that both must be possessed by man, in order to perfect the union which makes them a perfect One.
Wherever I go I find these books: cheek to cheek they repose on the carved table of the lady's boudoir; shoulder to shoulder they stand on the library shelf; tete-a-tete they give the rich centre-table an equivocal aspect. Young men and maidens, old men and matrons, children and chambermaids read them; yet they have no social effect. Woman understands love and herself; Man thinks he understands both; and the fictitious fervor of Monsieur Michelet has no more effect upon either than so much prismatic froth. It addresses itself piquantly to the eye, and murmurs like a shell in the ear; but once out of sight and hearing, and it is only an excuse for light talk and laxity of thought.
I am glad to record this; it shows that our national morality is in no danger of being wrecked on the
French coast by any such tropical gales as Michelet, Feydeau, or Dumas can blow. Let our publishers bring over a few more cargoes from the Augæan stables of French literature in English bottoms, and I will guarantee them large profits. We will read them, and immediately forget all about it.
But to return to Michelet again. Our women read his "Woman," and imagine that it compliments their sex—flatters them. Fortunate is it, that flattery very seldom changes a woman's character, though it may sway her judgment. She accepts it as her right, but seldom believes it. Queen Elizabeth graciously extended her hand to be kissed when her noble lover compared her to "the sun, whose faintest ray extinguishes the brightest planet;" yet that same hand had signed the flatterer's death-warrant. At the moment she was pleased, and her good sense dazed; but her heart was not reached. Flattery, skillfully administered, may add fuel to a woman's love; but the fire must first be kindled with something more sympathetic. An American woman may read "La Femme," and complacently receive its subtle equivoques as so much fuel added to her vanity; but that vanity was kindled into existence in the first place by the genuine homage of some honest man.
It was Michelet's "Woman," my boy, that suggested this letter; yet I did not intend, at the outset, to devote so much space to his unwholesome sophistry. If I have shown, however, that Michelet's "Woman" is only such a being as he would have created under that name, could he have changed places with the Deity, I have not wasted time and ink. Thank
fortune, there is but one French deity, and his proper name commences with a D.
Now, let me give my own idea of Woman—not "La Femme."