directly to the girls and sought to touch the chord of selfinterest. The grave Jean Raulin,1 from the eminence of one of the most fashionable pulpits in Paris, reasoned with them somewhat as follows: "To wed a widow, well and good! There is no fuss, no golden ring, no benediction, but withal it is a marriage: whilst with a counterfeit young maid presenting herself at the altar-! Ah! fair ladies, guard your purity to the very hour of your espousals, whether you be earthly or spiritual brides! That is the precious treasure you must at all costs save, and for many reasons: because of human frailty, according to the words of the 2nd Epistle to the Corinthians, 'We have our treasure in earthen vessels'; because of its inestimable value, according to the words of Ecclesiasticus, chapter xxvi., 'There is no price worthy of a continent soul'; because of the irreparability of the mischief, according to the words of St. Jerome, God can do all things save restore a lost virginity.' Many could not help regretting the free country life, and fancied that fidelity to a more rigorous system of education would have yielded better results. Of a truth it would have been better to make women frank creatures of passion than coquettes or mere worldlings. But an honest glance at the life of rural folk was enough to assure the observer that utilitarianism does not elevate the manners. Yes, seen from a distance, the ways of country folk seem compact of smiles and caresses, love and candour: pigs and cows meet in the meadow or at the fair; lovers too meet, at church, at a dance, after those winter parties so hotly denounced by the preachers, nay, every morning and evening if their hearts bid them; and they can exchange little presents, meet to scrape the fiddle or twang the guitar, without anyone finding fault, save perhaps a rival with whom they are quits for a few rounds at fisticuffs, or at most a thrust with a knife. A fashionable young girl, you may be sure, would not be horrified at the exchange of a few good swashing blows for her; she is apt to regard life as too tame. It remains to discover whether to reduce life to its primitive simplicity is really to elevate it. The idealists thought not.

[A doctor of the Sorbonne and a Dominican (1443-1514). In one of his sermons occurs the story of the church bells, repeated by Rabelais à propos of the marriage of Panurge.]

CHAPTER V

THE HUSBAND AND THE VARIOUS WAYS OF SLIPPING HIS YOKE

THE most troublesome question to be settled in regard to feminism is that of the authority of the husband. Legally, the husband was head of the household, an idea which found ready acceptance among the lower ranks of society, and which the people applied with its habitual logic. It won warm approval from Rabelais. Nothing struck men as more grotesque than a husband suspected of having allowed his wife to get the upper hand. An artisan of Bourges, at whom some unpleasant neighbours hummed a refrain about a woman who thrashed her husband, on that ground alone brought against them an action for slander.

In all sincerity, the husband considered himself an absolute owner, the lord and master, the head and soul of his wife, that "feminine and feeble creature" whom he condescended to take to his hearth, and who owed him, in the name of God and the law, "perfect love and obedience." As to the wife, she was, so to speak, stepping into a railway train driven without her assistance. She had paid her fare, and wedlock stretched itself rigidly in front of her like the driver's footboard, a place for manliness and nerve, but unromantic in the extreme. What matters to her the scenery along the line? The rippling sea may chant its amorous strains, the spring sun may dot the wilds with flowers, the tempest may sweep through the gorges, but the track stretches on and on in its direct unswerving course, with never a thrill, never a smile, unfaltering, unreflecting, mathematically.

What was the wife but the principal servant, or the eldest

of the children? She only addressed her master with the most profound respect. "Sir," she would say to him, or "My good friend." She was his "wife and subject"; if she wrote to him she signed, "your humble obedient handmaid and friend." But her husband spoke to her stick in hand. The stick! that was the only argument the women understood.

Bon cheval, mauvais cheval, veut l'esperon,

Bonne femme, mauvaise femme, veut le baston.1

Preachers spoke of the thrashings with a smile. Needless to say, the police did not interfere. Margaret of France did indeed think it a little vexatious that a lady honoured with the king's attentions like the beautiful Madame de Chateaubriand should still receive correction of this sort under her husband's roof-tree.

But this was not all: the authority of the husband was often coupled with the tyranny of the mother-in-law. The husband's mother, especially if she was a widow, rendered life horribly galling and difficult.

On the other hand, the married woman, no matter to what lengths her husband might carry his ill-usage, knew well that there was no dress for her anywhere. Unhappy wives sometimes in the sadness of despair fled from their homes in the most shocking plight, only to be remorselessly dragged back by their father, brother, or cousins, as a result of the appalling freemasonry between men. To rely on her own mother was out of the question for a wife; the two women belonged to two distinct houses, with a barrier, a great gulf fixed between them. In the early days of wedlock a husband, not to appear a tyrant, and because he was in no way inconvenienced, would allow his wife now and then to visit her mother; but he contrived that these visits became gradually rarer, and when he was not at home, a wife careful of her repose and dignity would never cross her mother's threshold without first writing to him: "If it be your good pleasure, I would fain go."

That was a woman's life. As it was not all smiles and rosewater, there was good reason for marrying the girls off early, before they had learned to care one way or another,

1[A woman, a dog, and a walnut tree,

The more you beat 'em, the better they be.]

their equipment being a few simple maxims inculcating obedience, and some odds and ends of medical knowledge. Wives who owed their training to Vivès could not but be very unhappy, according to the principles of marriage held by Vivès himself. For Vivès not merely approved of early marriages, he was also one of those who believed that the wife was created for the husband, and an irresponsible and inferior being; he looked at the husband as someone to bring her out. Erasmus, Bouchet, Dolce himself, nay, everybody had much the same impression.

The supremacy of the husband was the sacred ark; bold indeed would be the person who dared lift a hand to it! So in modern times we have seen aesthetes, like Ruskin, capable of every possible audacity but that. Ruskin does not understand women, and yet he has gone out of his way to exalt their rôle in the world; but, as soon as he comes face to face with the husband, he loses countenance, his candour vanishes, his words become cold and colourless.

How is one to explain this singular phenomenon, that so many good and even generous-minded men, after expressing a heart-felt sympathy with the sufferings of women, after proclaiming their intelligence and their right to live, falter and hide their heads when the question of liberty at home is raised? It is not because they believe there is no more to be said. La Rochefoucauld declares that "there are few good wives but are tired of their calling," to which it would be easy to reply, "There are few good wives whose calling is not tiring." But what is to be done? No one is inclined to go like Plato to the root of the matter and suppress marriage altogether. Marriage obviously necessitates a husband; it is a vexatious, clogging, disagreeable necessity, maybe, but there are no visible means of escaping it. A wife too is necessary; well, once a man and woman are united in wedlock, one of the two must needs hold the reins. There are many reasons, even physical ones, why a woman should not undertake to earn bread for the family and to flog the husband. And so the husband retains that right.

But if we go a little deeper into the psychology of domestic life in the sixteenth century, we shall note other important phenomena, pointing to a different conclusion.

To begin with, investigating facts from the outside, who was it that complained of marriage? The man; always the

man.

In actual working the_woman found compensations, or at least advantages in it. For her it was a state leading to boundless possibilities if only she cared to open the door. The more ardent paladins of feminism, indeed, were often disconcerted by her outwardly conciliatory attitude towards it. But the husband, married though he was, could not forget that setting up an establishment had involved the turning his back upon life. His chains appeared to him, if not heavy (to him they were not heavy), at any rate the sign of a monotonous, unvarying servitude. In the words of an old ballad, the monk may change his order, the canon his stall, the official his functions,

But we that be poor married men

Can neither go up nor down.

If we enquire of the spouses themselves, we find that the disagreements and difficulties rarely sprang from the larger facts-those that were regarded as irreparable.

Heaven seems to have taken care to arm us, in regard to important questions, with a veritable long-suffering. There are fools, it is true, who seriously think of keeping their wives under lock and key, not reflecting that no better means could be devised for making them desperate and leaving them at the mercy of Tom, Dick or Harry-the first passing officer. Such men only get their deserts. But there are also shrewd men who keep their eyes shut to what it is best not to see: everybody advises them to do so, or, what is better, gives them every assistance. There must be a special providence, even, watching over the wives.1 A wife, on the contrary, can hardly remain in ignorance of her husband's laxities, for these most often manifest themselves in the broad daylight, and sometimes under his own roof. Many stories might be told about chambermaids such as we read of in Scripture, but a little too mercenary, to be sure for the courts showed so much generosity in assessing the damages due in such circumstances that artless

1 In the long run the best things become wearisome: men at last believe they are sacrificing themselves. "Christ died only once for His church; we die every day for our wives," is the heartfelt cry of a husband; to which a lady retorts: "Go to the wars, then, and lie for a month on the bare ground; and you won't be sorry to get back to your good bed! Men only appreciate their comforts when they've lost them." (Heptameron, Tale 54.)