Part 57 (1/2)

A woman who is ice to his fire, is less pain to a man than the woman who is fire to his ice. There is hope for him in the one, but only a dreary despair in the other. The ardours that intoxicate him in the first summer of his pa.s.sion serve but to dull and chill him in the later time.

A frog that dwelt in a ditch spat at a worm that bore a lamp.

”Why do you do that?” said the glow-worm.

”Why do you s.h.i.+ne?” said the frog.

When a name is in the public mouth the public nostril likes to smell a foulness in it. It likes to think that Byron committed incest; that Milton was a brute; that Raffaelle's vices killed him; that Pascal was mad; that Lamartine lived and died a pauper; that Scipio took the treasury moneys; that Thucydides and Phidias stole; that Heloise and Hypatia were but loose women after all--so the gamut runs over twice a thousand years; and Rousseau is at heart the favourite of the world because he was such a beast, with all his talent.

When the world is driven to tears and prayers by Schiller, it hugs itself to remember that he could not write a line without the smell of rotten apples near, and that when he died there was not enough money in his desk to pay his burial. They make him smaller, closer, less divine--the apples and the pauper's coffin.

”Get a great cook; give three big b.a.l.l.s a winter, and drive English horses; you need never consider Society then, it will never find fault with you, _ma tres-chere_.”

She did not quite understand, but she obeyed; and Society never did.

Society says to the members of it as the Spanish monk to the tree that he pruned, and that cried out under his hook:

”It is not beauty that is wanted of you, nor shade, but olives.”

Moral loveliness or mental depth, charm of feeling or n.o.bleness of instinct, beauty, or shade, it does not ask for, but it does ask for olives--olives that shall round off its dessert, and flavour its dishes, and tickle its sated palate; olives that it shall pick up without trouble, and never be asked to pay for; these are what it likes.

Now it is precisely in olives that the woman who has one foot in Society and one foot out of it will be profuse.

She must please, or perish.

She must content, or how will she be countenanced?

The very perilousness of her position renders her solicitous to attract and to appease.

Society follows a natural selfishness in its condonation of her; she is afraid of it, therefore she must bend all her efforts to be agreeable to it! it can reject her at any given moment, so that her court of it must be continual and expansive. No woman will take so much pains, give so much entertainment, be so willing to conciliate, be so lavish in hospitality, be so elastic in willingness, as the woman who adores Society, and knows that any black Sat.u.r.day it may turn her out with a bundle of rods, and a peremptory dismissal.

Between her and Society there is a tacit bond.

”Amuse me, and I will receive you.”

”Receive me, and I will amuse you.”