Essays of Michel de Montaigne Part 103

should have called to mind, that, as in the mysteries of the Bona Dea, all masculine appearance was excluded, he did nothing, if he did not geld horses and a.s.ses, in short, all nature:

"Omne adeo genus in terris, hominumque, ferarumque, Et genus aequoreum, pecudes, pictaeque volucres, In furias ignemque ruunt."

["So that all living things, men and animals, wild or tame, and fish and gaudy fowl, rush to this flame of love."

--Virgil, Georg., iii. 244.]

The G.o.ds, says Plato, have given us one disobedient and unruly member that, like a furious animal, attempts, by the violence of its appet.i.te, to subject all things to it; and so they have given to women one like a greedy and ravenous animal, which, if it be refused food in season, grows wild, impatient of delay, and infusing its rage into their bodies, stops the pa.s.sages, and hinders respiration, causing a thousand ills, till, having imbibed the fruit of the common thirst, it has plentifully bedewed the bottom of their matrix. Now my legislator--[The Pope who, as Montaigne has told us, took it into his head to geld the statues.]-- should also have considered that, peradventure, it were a chaster and more fruitful usage to let them know the fact as it is betimes, than permit them to guess according to the liberty and heat of their own fancy; instead of the real parts they subst.i.tute, through hope and desire, others that are three times more extravagant; and a certain friend of mine lost himself by producing his in place and time when the opportunity was not present to put them to their more serious use. What mischief do not those pictures of prodigious dimension do that the boys make upon the staircases and galleries of the royal houses? they give the ladies a cruel contempt of our natural furniture. And what do we know but that Plato, after other well-inst.i.tuted republics, ordered that the men and women, old and young, should expose themselves naked to the view of one another, in his gymnastic exercises, upon that very account? The Indian women who see the men in their natural state, have at least cooled the sense of seeing. And let the women of the kingdom of Pegu say what they will, who below the waist have nothing to cover them but a cloth slit before, and so strait, that what decency and modesty soever they pretend by it, at every step all is to be seen, that it is an invention to allure the men to them, and to divert them from boys, to whom that nation is generally inclined; yet, peradventure they lose more by it than they get, and one may venture to say, that an entire appet.i.te is more sharp than one already half-glutted by the eyes. Livia was wont to say, that to a virtuous woman a naked man was but a statue. The Lacedaemonian women, more virgins when wives than our daughters are, saw every day the young men of their city stripped naked in their exercises, themselves little heeding to cover their thighs in walking, believing themselves, says Plato, sufficiently covered by their virtue without any other robe.

But those, of whom St. Augustin speaks, have given nudity a wonderful power of temptation, who have made it a doubt, whether women at the day of judgment shall rise again in their own s.e.x, and not rather in ours, for fear of tempting us again in that holy state. In brief, we allure and flesh them by all sorts of ways: we incessantly heat and stir up their imagination, and then we find fault. Let us confess the truth; there is scarce one of us who does not more apprehend the shame that accrues to him by the vices of his wife than by his own, and that is not more solicitous (a wonderful charity) of the conscience of his virtuous wife than of his own; who had not rather commit theft and sacrilege, and that his wife was a murderess and a heretic, than that she should not be more chaste than her husband: an unjust estimate of vices. Both we and they are capable of a thousand corruptions more prejudicial and unnatural than l.u.s.t: but we weigh vices, not according to nature, but according to our interest; by which means they take so many unequal forms.

The austerity of our decrees renders the application of women to this vice more violent and vicious than its own condition needs, and engages it in consequences worse than their cause: they will readily offer to go to the law courts to seek for gain, and to the wars to get reputation, rather than in the midst of ease and delights, to have to keep so difficult a guard. Do not they very well see that there is neither merchant nor soldier who will not leave his business to run after this sport, or the porter or cobbler, toiled and tired out as they are with labour and hunger?

"Num tu, qux tenuit dives Achaemenes, Aut pinguis Phrygiae Mygdonias opes, Permutare velis crine Licymnim?

Plenas aut Arab.u.m domos, Dum fragrantia detorquet ad oscula Cervicem, aut facili sxvitia negat, Quae poscente magis gaudeat eripi, Interdum rapere occupet?"

["Wouldst thou not exchange all that the wealthy Arhaemenes had, or the Mygdonian riches of fertile Phrygia, for one ringlet of Licymnia's hair? or the treasures of the Arabians, when she turns her head to you for fragrant kisses, or with easily a.s.suaged anger denies them, which she would rather by far you took by force, and sometimes herself s.n.a.t.c.hes one!"--Horace, Od., ii. 12, 21.]

I do not know whether the exploits of Alexander and Caesar really surpa.s.s the resolution of a beautiful young woman, bred up after our fashion, in the light and commerce of the world, a.s.sailed by so many contrary examples, and yet keeping herself entire in the midst of a thousand continual and powerful solicitations. There is no doing more difficult than that not doing, nor more active:

I hold it more easy to carry a suit of armour all the days of one's life than a maidenhead; and the vow of virginity of all others is the most n.o.ble, as being the hardest to keep:

"Diaboli virtus in lumbis est,"

says St. Jerome. We have, doubtless, resigned to the ladies the most difficult and most vigorous of all human endeavours, and let us resign to them the glory too. This ought to encourage them to be obstinate in it; 'tis a brave thing for them to defy us, and to spurn under foot that vain pre-eminence of valour and virtue that we pretend to have over them; they will find if they do but observe it, that they will not only be much more esteemed for it, but also much more beloved. A gallant man does not give over his pursuit for being refused, provided it be a refusal of chast.i.ty, and not of choice; we may swear, threaten, and complain to much purpose; we therein do but lie, for we love them all the better: there is no allurement like modesty, if it be not rude and crabbed. 'Tis stupidity and meanness to be obstinate against hatred and disdain; but against a virtuous and constant resolution, mixed with goodwill, 'tis the exercise of a n.o.ble and generous soul. They may acknowledge our service to a certain degree, and give us civilly to understand that they disdain us not; for the law that enjoins them to abominate us because we adore them, and to hate us because we love them, is certainly very cruel, if but for the difficulty of it. Why should they not give ear to our offers and requests, so long as they are kept within the bounds of modesty?

wherefore should we fancy them to have other thoughts within, and to be worse than they seem? A queen of our time said with spirit, "that to refuse these courtesies is a testimony of weakness in women and a self-accusation of facility, and that a lady could not boast of her chast.i.ty who was never tempted."

The limits of honour are not cut so short; they may give themselves a little rein, and relax a little without being faulty: there lies on the frontier some s.p.a.ce free, indifferent, and neuter. He that has beaten and pursued her into her fort is a strange fellow if he be not satisfied with his fortune: the price of the conquest is considered by the difficulty. Would you know what impression your service and merit have made in her heart? Judge of it by her behaviour. Such an one may grant more, who does not grant so much. The obligation of a benefit wholly relates to the good will of those who confer it: the other coincident circ.u.mstances are dumb, dead, and casual; it costs her dearer to grant you that little, than it would do her companion to grant all. If in anything rarity give estimation, it ought especially in this: do not consider how little it is that is given, but how few have it to give; the value of money alters according to the coinage and stamp of the place. Whatever the spite and indiscretion of some may make them say in the excess of their discontent, virtue and truth will in time recover all the advantage. I have known some whose reputation has for a great while suffered under slander, who have afterwards been restored to the world's universal approbation by their mere constancy without care or artifice; every one repents, and gives himself the lie for what he has believed and said; and from girls a little suspected they have been afterward advanced to the first rank amongst the ladies of honour. Somebody told Plato that all the world spoke ill of him. "Let them talk," said he; "I will live so as to make them change their note." Besides the fear of G.o.d, and the value of so rare a glory, which ought to make them look to themselves, the corruption of the age we live in compels them to it; and if I were they, there is nothing I would not rather do than intrust my reputation in so dangerous hands. In my time the pleasure of telling (a pleasure little inferior to that of doing) was not permitted but to those who had some faithful and only friend; but now the ordinary discourse and common table-talk is nothing but boasts of favours received and the secret liberality of ladies. In earnest, 'tis too abject, too much meanness of spirit, in men to suffer such ungrateful, indiscreet, and giddy-headed people so to persecute, forage, and rifle those tender and charming favours.

This our immoderate and illegitimate exasperation against this vice springs from the most vain and turbulent disease that afflicts human minds, which is jealousy:

"Quis vetat apposito lumen de lumine sumi?

Dent licet a.s.sidue, nil tamen inde perit;"

["Who says that one light should not be lighted from another light?

Let them give ever so much, as much ever remains to lose."--Ovid, De Arte Amandi, iii. 93. The measure of the last line is not good; but the words are taken from the epigram in the Catalecta ent.i.tled Priapus.]

she, and envy, her sister, seem to me to be the most foolish of the whole troop. As to the last, I can say little about it; 'tis a pa.s.sion that, though said to be so mighty and powerful, had never to do with me. As to the other, I know it by sight, and that's all. Beasts feel it; the shepherd Cratis, having fallen in love with a she-goat, the he-goat, out of jealousy, came, as he lay asleep, to b.u.t.t the head of the female, and crushed it. We have raised this fever to a greater excess by the examples of some barbarous nations; the best disciplined have been touched with it, and 'tis reason, but not transported:

"Ense maritali nemo confossus adulter Purpureo Stygias sanguine tinxit aquas."

["Never did adulterer slain by a husband stain with purple blood the Stygian waters."]

Lucullus, Caesar, Pompey, Antony, Cato, and other brave men were cuckolds, and knew it, without making any bustle about it; there was in those days but one c.o.xcomb, Lepidus, that died for grief that his wife had used him so.

"Ah! tum te miserum malique fati, Quem attractis pedibus, patente porta, Percurrent raphanique mugilesque:"

["Wretched man! when, taken in the fact, thou wilt be dragged out of doors by the heels, and suffer the punishment of thy adultery."--Catullus, xv. 17.]

and the G.o.d of our poet, when he surprised one of his companions with his wife, satisfied himself by putting them to shame only,

"Atque aliquis de dis non tristibus optat Sic fieri turpis:"

["And one of the merry G.o.ds wishes that he should himself like to be so disgraced."--Ovid, Metam., iv. 187.]

and nevertheless took anger at the lukewarm embraces she gave him; complaining that upon that account she was grown jealous of his affection:

"Quid causas petis ex alto? fiducia cessit Quo tibi, diva, mei?"

["Dost thou seek causes from above? Why, G.o.ddess, has your confidence in me ceased?"--Virgil, AEneid, viii. 395.]

nay, she entreats arms for a b.a.s.t.a.r.d of hers,

"Arena rogo genitrix nato."

["I, a mother, ask armour for a son."--Idem, ibid., 383.]

which are freely granted; and Vulcan speaks honourably of AEneas,

"Arma acri facienda viro,"

["Arms are to be made for a valiant hero."--AEneid, viii. 441.]

with, in truth, a more than human humanity. And I am willing to leave this excess of kindness to the G.o.ds:

"Nec divis homines componier aequum est."

["Nor is it fit to compare men with G.o.ds."

--Catullus, lxviii. 141.]

As to the confusion of children, besides that the gravest legislators ordain and affect it in their republics, it touches not the women, where this pa.s.sion is, I know not how, much better seated:

"Saepe etiam Juno, maxima coelicolam, Conjugis in culpa flagravit quotidiana."

["Often was Juno, greatest of the heaven-dwellers, enraged by her husband's daily infidelities."--Idem, ibid.]

When jealousy seizes these poor souls, weak and incapable of resistance, 'tis pity to see how miserably it torments and tyrannises over them; it insinuates itself into them under the t.i.tle of friendship, but after it has once possessed them, the same causes that served for a foundation of good-will serve them for a foundation of mortal hatred. 'Tis, of all the diseases of the mind, that which the most things serve for aliment and the fewest for remedy: the virtue, health, merit, reputation of the husband are incendiaries of their fury and ill-will:

"Nullae sunt inimicitiae, nisi amoris, acerbae."

["No enmities are bitter, save that of love."

(Or:) "No hate is implacable except the hatred of love"

--Propertius, ii. 8, 3.]

This fever defaces and corrupts all they have of beautiful and good besides; and there is no action of a jealous woman, let her be how chaste and how good a housewife soever, that does not relish of anger and wrangling; 'tis a furious agitation, that rebounds them to an extremity quite contrary to its cause. This held good with one Octavius at Rome.

Having lain with Pontia Posthumia, he augmented love with fruition, and solicited with all importunity to marry her: unable to persuade her, this excessive affection precipitated him to the effects of the most cruel and mortal hatred: he killed her. In like manner, the ordinary symptoms of this other amorous disease are intestine hatreds, private conspiracies, and cabals:

"Notumque furens quid faemina possit,"

["And it is known what an angry woman is capable of doing."

--AEneid, V. 21.]