And the poor wives, why should they not brighten the ennui of the nuptial bed with some little love affair? Were they not bound forever to a man they had never loved, whom they had perhaps seen only once? Were they not sold by their parents, guardians, and matrons, like merchandise? Was not their dowry rated at the weight of a coat of arms? and have not they also the right to love? And all the others who have had the good fortune to love the man who has given them his name, and have thrown themselves into his arms, giving him their whole hearts, happy to be able to transform themselves in him and for him; who dreamt of making marriage a synonym of love, and who instead found the husband in a few months in the arms of an old love; have not all these women the right of vengeance? This is matrimony as it is daily represented in the many small theaters which we call men’s houses. In these theaters, however (one must be just and not exaggerate), there are more farces played than comedies, more comedies than dramas. Tragedies are rare. For this high form of dramatic art heroes are required, and they are very scarce in modern society. We have made our houses, statues, pictures, and gardens smaller, and have been compelled to reduce our feelings also. The pistol and dagger, too, figure in the chronicles of matrimony, but as phenomena. In the home-theater, on the contrary, the punishment of retaliation, the little basenesses, the stirring of conscience, under all forms and at all sorts of prices, are in common use. The _ménages à trois_ (aye, even four) are pretty pictures in kind; and the hypocrisy of husbands who will not see, because they detest scenes, figure every day in the running account of modern matrimony. Live and let live—to apply the noble modern institution of co-operative societies to the family; and raise aloft the banner of the association of forces. One for all, and all for one! ⁂ Infidelity and treachery are not the only moths which corrode marriage. We have all the domestic discords which spring from the inequality of the needs of intelligence, heart, and habits of thought; we have the partisans of the wife and those of the husband, who quarrel amongst themselves, complicating the problem, poisoning the wounds, opening with every touch the cicatrices which time and love were so pitifully healing. If war is an exception in matrimony, peace is still more rare; and one may safely say that in the greater number of cases it is an armed peace, an atmosphere which relaxes the strength, dries up the purest sources of tenderness, and destroys its happiness. In a word, as our society is constituted in the present day, hell is not common in the family circle, paradise exceedingly rare, but purgatory is almost universal. And yet marriage is still the _least evil_ amongst the unions of the man and woman; it can and ought to grow continually better and increase human happiness; which is for me the highest and truest end of progress.