Bab Bab 18 · Chapter XVIII

. Chapter XVIII

“So we lived in the city. In the city the wretched feel less sad. One

can live there a hundred years without being noticed, and be dead a

long time before anybody will notice it. People have no time to inquire

into your life. All are absorbed. Business, social relations, art, the

health of children, their education. And there are visits that must be

received and made; it is necessary to see this one, it is necessary to

hear that one or the other one. In the city there are always one, two,

or three celebrities that it is indispensable that one should visit.

“Now one must care for himself, or care for such or such a little one,

now it is the professor, the private tutor, the governesses, . . . and

life is absolutely empty. In this activity we were less conscious of

the sufferings of our cohabitation. Moreover, in the first of it, we

had a superb occupation,—the arrangement of the new dwelling, and then,

too, the moving from the city to the country, and from the country to

the city.

“Thus we spent a winter. The following winter an incident happened to

us which passed unnoticed, but which was the fundamental cause of all

that happened later. My wife was suffering, and the rascals (the

doctors) would not permit her to conceive a child, and taught her how

to avoid it. I was profoundly disgusted. I struggled vainly against it,

but she insisted frivolously and obstinately, and I surrendered. The

last justification of our life as wretches was thereby suppressed, and

life became baser than ever.

“The peasant and the workingman need children, and hence their conjugal

relations have a justification. But we, when we have a few children,

have no need of any more. They make a superfluous confusion of expenses

and joint heirs, and are an embarrassment. Consequently we have no

excuses for our existence as wretches, but we are so deeply degraded

that we do not see the necessity of a justification. The majority of

people in contemporary society give themselves up to this debauchery

without the slightest remorse. We have no conscience left, except, so

to speak, the conscience of public opinion and of the criminal code.

But in this matter neither of these consciences is struck. There is not

a being in society who blushes at it. Each one practices it,—X, Y, Z,

etc. What is the use of multiplying beggars, and depriving ourselves of

the joys of social life? There is no necessity of having conscience

before the criminal code, or of fearing it: low girls, soldiers’ wives

who throw their children into ponds or wells, these certainly must be

put in prison. But with us the suppression is effected opportunely and

properly.

“Thus we passed two years more. The method prescribed by the rascals

had evidently succeeded. My wife had grown stouter and handsomer. It

was the beauty of the end of summer. She felt it, and paid much

attention to her person. She had acquired that provoking beauty that

stirs men. She was in all the brilliancy of the wife of thirty years,

who conceives no children, eats heartily, and is excited. The very

sight of her was enough to frighten one. She was like a spirited

carriage-horse that has long been idle, and suddenly finds itself

without a bridle. As for my wife, she had no bridle, as for that

matter, ninety-nine hundredths of our women have none.”