The Wild Woman and the Coquette

"Really, my dear, you tire me immeasurably and unpityingly; one would
say, to hear you sigh, that you suffered more than the sexagenarian
gleaners or the old beggar hags who pick up crusts at the doors of
restaurants.

"If at least your sighs expressed remorse, they would do you some
honor; but they convey merely the surfeit of well-being and the languor
of repose. And, too, you will not stop your constant flow of needless
words: 'Love me well! I have so much need! Comfort me thus, caress me
so!'

"Come! I shall try to cure you; perhaps we shall find a means, for two
cents, in the midst of a fair, not far away.

"Take a good look, I pray you, at this strong iron cage, within
which moves, howling like a damned soul, shaking the bars like an
ourang-outang enraged by exile, imitating to perfection, now the
circular bounds of the tiger, now the clumsy waddling of the polar
bear, that hairy monster whose form vaguely resembles your own.

"That monster is one of those beasts one usually calls 'my angel'--that
is, a woman. The other monster, he who bawls at the top of his voice,
club in his hand, is a husband. He has chained his lawful wife like
a beast, and he exhibits her in the suburbs on fair days--with the
magistrates' permission, of course.

"Pay close attention. See with what voracity (perhaps not feigned) she
tears apart the living rabbits and the cackling fowl her keeper throws
her. 'Come,' he says, 'one must not eat one's whole store in a day';
and, with that wise word, he cruelly snatches the prey, the winding
entrails of which remain a moment caught on the teeth of the ferocious
beast--I mean, the woman.

"Come! A good blow to calm her! for she darts terrible glances of lust
at the stolen food. Good God! The club is not a jester's slap stick!
Did you hear the flesh resound, right through the artificial hair? Her
eyes leap from her head now; she howls more naturally. In her rage
she sparkles all over, like smitten iron.

"Such are the conjugal customs of these two children of Adam and Eve,
these works of Thy hands, O my God! This woman is doubtless miserable,
though after all, perhaps, the titillating joys of glory are not
unknown to her. There are misfortunes less remediable, and with no
compensation. But in the world to which she has been thrown, she has
never been able to think that woman might deserve a different destiny.

"Now, as for us two, my fine lady! Seeing the hells of which the world
is made, what would you have me think of your pretty hell, you who rest
only on stuffs as soft as your own skin, who eat only cooked viands,
for whom a skilled domestic takes care to cut the bites?

"And what can mean to me all these soft signs which heave your perfumed
breast, my lusty coquette? And all those affectations learned from
books, and that everlasting melancholy, intended to arouse an emotion
far other than pity? Indeed, I sometimes feel like teaching you what
true misfortune means.

"Seeing you so, my beautiful dainty one, your feet in the mire and
your moist eyes turned to the sky, as though to demand a king, one
would say indeed: a young frog invoking the ideal. If you scorn the log
(which I am now, you know), beware the stork which will kill, swallow,
devour you at its caprice.

"Poet as I am, I am not such a fool as you may think, and if you tire
me too often with your whining affectations, I shall treat you as a
wild woman, or throw you through the window as an empty flask."