Paris in the Twentieth Century (16 page)

Michel
spent the following night in a delicious insomnia: why bother to sleep? Better
to dream wide awake, which the young man did quite conscientiously until dawn;
his thoughts touched the ultimate limits of ethereal poetry.

The
next morning, he walked through the offices and climbed onto his Ledger.
Quinsonnas was waiting for him. Michel shook or rather squeezed his friend's
hand but seemed reluctant to speak. When he began dictating, his voice was
strangely ardent.

Quinsonnas
stared at him, but Michel avoided meeting his eyes. "Something's happened,
" the pianist reflected. "What a strange expression! He looks like
someone who's just come back from the tropics!"

The
day passed in this fashion, Michel dictating, Quinsonnas writing, each watching
the other on the sly. A second day passed without producing any exchange of thoughts
between the two friends.

"Love
must be at the bottom of this, " the pianist decided. "Let him stew
in his sentiments—eventually he'll talk. "

On
the third day, Michel suddenly interrupted Quinsonnas as he was forming a
splendid capital letter. "My friend, " he asked, blushing, "what
do you think of women?"

"I
was right, " the pianist congratulated himself, but made no answer.

Michel
repeated his question, blushing even more deeply.

"My
boy, " Quinsonnas replied solemnly, putting down his pen, "our opinion
of women, speaking as men, is quite variable. I myself don't think the same
thing about them in the morning that I do at night; spring leads me to
different thoughts about them from those I have in autumn; rain or fair weather
can remarkably alter my doctrine; in short, even my digestion has an
incontestable influence on my sentiments in their regard. "

"That's
not an answer, " said Michel.

"My
boy, let me respond to one question by another. Do you believe there are still
women on this earth?"

"Do
I ever!"

"You
meet them from time to time?"

"Every
day. "

"Understand
me, " the pianist continued. "I'm not talking about those more or
less feminine beings whose goal is to contribute to the propagation of the
human species, and who will ultimately be replaced by compressed-air machines.
"

"You're
joking. "

"My
friend, we are speaking quite seriously, but that may still afford some cause
for complaint. "

"Oh
please, Quinsonnas!" Michel exclaimed. "Be serious!"

"Not
for one minute. Gaiety is of the essence. I return to my proposition: there are
no women left; the species has vanished, like pug-dogs and megatheriums!"

"Please!"

"Allow
me to continue, my son; I believe that there were indeed women in the very
remote past; the ancient writers speak of them in quite formal terms; they even
cited, as the most perfect specimen among them, the Parisienne. According to
the old texts and prints of the period, she was a charming creature, unrivaled
the world over; in herself she combined the most perfect vices and the most
vicious perfections, being a woman in every sense of the word. But gradually
the blood grew thin, the race deteriorated, and physiologists acknowledged this
deplorable decadence in their texts. Have you ever seen caterpillars become
butterflies?"

"Certainly.
"

"Well,
" the pianist replied, "this was just the opposite; the butterfly
regressed to being a caterpillar. The caressing manner of the Parisienne, her
alluring figure, her witty and tender glances, her affectionate smile, her firm
yet precise embonpoint soon gave way to certain long, lean, skinny, arid,
fleshless, emaciated forms, to a mechanical, methodical, and puritanical unconcern.
The waist flattened, the glance austerified, the joints stiffened; a stiff,
hard nose lowered over narrowed lips; the stride grew longer; the Angel of
Geometry, formerly so lavish with his most alluring curves, delivered woman up
to all the rigors of straight lines and acute angles. The Frenchwoman has
become Americanized; she speaks seriously about serious matters, she takes
life seriously, she rides on the rigid saddle of modern manners, dresses
poorly, tastelessly, and wears corsets of galvanized tin which can resist the
most powerful pressures. My son, France has lost her true superiority; in the
charming century of Louis XV, women had feminized men; subsequently they have
switched gender and no longer deserve the artist's gaze or the lover's
attention!"

"Don't
stop now. "

"Yes,
" Quinsonnas continued, "you smile! You suppose you have the
wherewithal to confound me in your pocket! You have your little exception to
the general rule ready to hand! Well, you will merely confirm that rule! I
maintain my position. And I shall take it even further: no woman, whatever
class she belongs to, has escaped this degradation of the race! What we used to
call the grisette has vanished; the courtesan, drearier than ever now that
she's a kept woman, displays a severe immorality all her own! She is clumsy
and stupid but functions with order and economy, so that no man nowadays ruins
himself for her! Ruins himself! Please, the word itself is obsolete! Everyone
gets rich today, my son, except the human body and the human mind. "

"So
you claim it is impossible to meet a true woman in this day and age. "

"Indeed,
under ninety-five years of age, there are none. The last ones died with our
grandmothers. However..."

"Oh,
however?"

"Such
things can be met with in the Faubourg Saint-Germain; in this one little corner
of our enormous Paris, that rare plant
puella desiderata,
as your
professor would say, is cultivated, but only here. "

"So,
" replied Michel, smiling ironically, "you persist in this opinion
that woman is a vanished race. "

"My
son, the great moralists of the nineteenth century already foresaw this
catastrophe. Balzac, who knew something about the subject, suggests as much in
his famous letter to Stendhal: Woman, he says, is Passion, Man is Action, and
it is for this reason that man adores woman. Well, they are both action now,
and as a consequence there are no longer any women in France. "

"Fine,
" said Michel, "and what do you think of marriage?"

"Nothing
good. "

"But
beyond that... "

"I
should be more inclined toward other men's marriages than my own. "

"So
you'll never marry?"

"No,
not until that famous tribunal demanded by Voltaire is convened to judge cases
of infidelity—six men and six women, with a hermaphrodite with the deciding
vote in case of a tie. "

"Now
be serious. "

"I
am being quite serious; such a tribunal would be the only reliable guarantee!
You remember what happened two months ago, Monsieur de Coutances brought
adultery charges against his wife. "

"No!"

"Well,
when the magistrate asked Madame de Coutances why she had forgotten her duties,
she replied, 'I have such a poor memory!' And was acquitted. And quite
frankly, that response deserved an acquittal. "

"Leaving
Madame de Coutances aside, let's get back to marriage. "

"My
son, here is the absolute truth on this subject: being a boy, one can always
marry; being married, one cannot become a boy again. Between the married state
and the bachelor state yawns a dreadful abyss. "

"Quinsonnas,
what is it you have against marriage?"

"What
I have... is this: in an age when the family is tending toward
self-destruction, when private interest impels each of its members into
divergent paths, when the need to get rich at all costs destroys the heart's
sentiments, marriage seems to me a heroic futility; in the past, according to
the ancient authors, things were quite different; leafing through the old dictionaries,
you will be astonished to find such terms as
Lares and Penates, hearth and home, my life's companion,
and
so on, but such expressions have long since vanished, along with the things
they represented. They are no longer used; it seems that in the past spouses
(another word that has fallen into desuetude) intimately mingled their
existence; people recalled these words of Sancho Panza: a woman's advice isn't
much, but a man would have to be mad not to heed it! And men heeded it.
Consider the difference: the husband nowadays lives far from his wife, he
sleeps at his club, eats there, dines there, works there, plays there....
Madame's life is her own affair, in every sense of the word. Monsieur greets
her as a stranger, if he should happen to meet her in the street; from time to
time he pays her a visit, turns up on her Mondays or her Wednesdays; sometimes
Madame invites him to dinner, more rarely to spend the evening; finally, they
meet so little, see each other so little, speak to each other so little and
with so little intimacy, that one wonders, quite rightly, how there happen to
be so many rightful heirs in this world!"

"More
or less true, I suppose. "

"Altogether
true, my son. We have followed the tendency of the last century, in which
people sought to have as few children as possible, mothers apparently vexed to
see their daughters too promptly pregnant, and young husbands in despair at
having committed such a piece of clumsiness. Hence, in our day and age, the
number of legitimate children has singularly diminished to the advantage of
the bastards; these already form an impressive majority; they will soon become
the masters in France, and will revive the law which forbids any inquiry into
paternity. "

"Obvious
enough. "

"Now,
the problem, if it is a problem, exists in every class of society; note that an
old egotist like me does not blame this state of affairs, he takes advantage of
it; but I insist on my point that marriage is no longer the menage, and that
Hymen's torch no longer serves, as once it did, to warm the soup on the stove.
"

"Therefore,
" Michel summed up, "if for some improbable, let us say impossible
reason you were to decide to take a wife—"

"My
dear fellow, I should first of all attempt to make myself a millionaire like
everyone else; it requires a great deal of money to lead an existence-times-
two; a girl no longer marries unless she has her weight in gold in the paternal
coffers, and a Marie-Louise with her wretched dowry of two hundred fifty
thousand francs wouldn't find a single banker's son who would have her. "

"But
a Napoleon?"

"Napoleons
are rare, my boy. "

"So
I see you have no enthusiasm for marrying. "

"Not
exactly. "

"Would
you have any for mine?"

"Now
we're getting there, " the pianist mused, and made no reply.

"Well,
what do you say?"

"I'm
looking at you, " Quinsonnas replied solemnly.

"And..."

"And
I wonder where to begin tying you up. "

"Me!"

"Yes:
madman, lunatic—what's happening to you?"

"I'm
happy, " breathed Michel.

"Reason
it out: either you have genius or you don't. The word offends you, so we'll say
talent. If you have no talent, you die in poverty a deux. If you have talent,
it's a different matter. "

"Different
how?"

"My
boy, don't you know that genius, and even talent, is a disease, and that an
artist's wife must resign herself to the role of a practical nurse!"

"Well,
I've found-"

"A
sister of charity, " interrupted Quinsonnas. "There are none. Only
cousins of charity now, and cousins once removed!"

Michel
persisted. "I've found, I tell you—"

"A
woman?"

"Yes!"

"A
young woman? A girl?"

"Yes!"

"An
angel!"

"Yes!"

"Then
let me tell you, my son, pluck her feathers and put her in a cage, otherwise
your angel will fly away. "

"Listen,
Quinsonnas, I'm talking about a young person who happens to be sweet, kind,
loving—"