Switzerland
I know few families happier than those of the Oberland, the part of Switzerland that lies round Berne; and it is a fact of public notoriety (1816) that the girls there spend Saturday to Sunday nights with their lovers.
The fools who know the world, after a voyage from Paris to Saint Cloud, will cry out; happily I find in a Swiss writer confirmation of what I myself[2] saw during four months.
"An honest peasant complained of certain losses he had sustained in his orchard; I asked him why he didn't keep a dog: 'My daughters would never get married.' I did not understand his answer; he told me he had had such a bad-tempered dog that none of the young men dared climb up to the windows any longer.
"Another peasant, mayor of his village, told me in praise of his wife, that when she was a girl no one had had more Kilter or Wächterer—that is, had had more young men come to spend the night with her.
"A Colonel, widely esteemed, was forced, while crossing the mountains, to spend the night at the bottom of one of the most lonely and picturesque valleys in the country. He lodged with the first magistrate in the valley, a man rich and of good repute. On entering, the stranger noticed a young girl of sixteen, a model of gracefulness, freshness and simplicity: she was the daughter of the master of the house. That night there was a village ball; the stranger paid court to the girl, who was really strikingly beautiful. At last, screwing up courage, he ventured to ask her whether he couldn't 'keep watch' with her. 'No,' answered the girl, 'I share a room with my cousin, but I'll come myself to yours.' You can judge of the confusion this answer gave him. They had supper, the stranger got up, the girl took a torch and followed him into his room; he imagined the moment was at hand. 'Oh no,' she said simply, 'I must first ask Mamma's permission.' He would have been less staggered by a thunderbolt! She went out; his courage revived; he slipped into these good folks' parlour, and listened to the girl begging her mother in a caressing tone to grant her the desired permission; in the end she got it. 'Eh, old man,' said the mother to her husband who was already in bed, 'd'you allow Trineli to spend the night with the Colonel?' 'With all my heart,' answers the father, 'I think I'd lend even my wife to such a man.' 'Right then, go,' says the mother to Trineli; 'but be a good girl, and don't take off your petticoat...' At day-break, Trineli, respected by the stranger, rose still virgin. She arranged the bedclothes, prepared coffee and cream for her partner and, after she had breakfasted with him, seated on his bed, cut off a little piece of her broustpletz (a piece of velvet going over the breast). 'Here,' she said, 'keep this souvenir of a happy night; I shall never forget it.—Why are you a Colonel?' And giving him a last kiss, she ran away; he didn't manage to see her again.[3] Here you have the absolute opposite of French morals, and I am far from approving them."
Were I a legislator, I would have people adopt in France, as in Germany, the custom of evening dances. Three times a week girls would go with their mothers to a ball, beginning at seven and ending at midnight, and demanding no other outlay but a violin and a few glasses of water. In a neighbouring room the mothers, maybe a little jealous of their daughters' happy education, would play boston; in a third, the fathers would find papers and could talk politics. Between midnight and one o'clock all the families would collect together and return to the paternal roof. Girls would get to know young men; they would soon come to loathe fatuity and the indiscretions it is responsible for—in fact they would choose themselves husbands. Some girls would have unhappy love-affairs, but the number of deceived husbands and unhappy matches would diminish to an immense degree. It would then be less absurd to attempt to punish infidelity with dishonour. The law could say to young women: "You have chosen your husband—be faithful to him." In those circumstances I would allow the indictment and punishment by the courts of what the English call criminal conversation. The courts could impose, to the profit of prisons and hospitals, a fine equal to two-thirds of the seducer's fortune and imprisonment for several years.
A woman could be indicted for adultery before a jury. The jury should first declare that the husband's conduct had been irreproachable.
A woman, if convicted, could be condemned to imprisonment for life. If the husband had been absent more than two years, the woman could not be condemned to more than some years' imprisonment. Public morals would soon model themselves on these laws and would perfect them.[4]
And then the nobles and the priests, still regretting bitterly the proper times of Madame de Montespan or Madame du Barry, would be forced to allow divorce.[5]