The Physiology of Marriage, Part 1Balzac, Honoré de
Philosophy
The Physiology of Marriage, Part 1
Balzac, Honoré de
Marriage -- Humor
VIII.
An honest woman ought to be in a financial condition such as forbids
her lover to think she will ever cost him anything.
IX.
A woman who lives on the third story of any street excepting the Rue
de Rivoli and the Rue de Castiglione is not an honest woman.
X.
The wife of a banker is always an honest woman, but the woman who sits
at the cashier's desk cannot be one, unless her husband has a very
large business and she does not live over his shop.
XI.
The unmarried niece of a bishop when she lives with him can pass for
an honest woman, because if she has an intrigue she has to deceive her
uncle.
XII.
An honest woman is one whom her lover fears to compromise.
XIII.
The wife of an artist is always an honest woman.
By the application of these principles even a man from Ardeche can
resolve all the difficulties which our subject presents.
In order that a woman may be able to keep a cook, may be finely
educated, may possess the sentiment of coquetry, may have the right to
pass whole hours in her boudoir lying on a sofa, and may live a life
of soul, she must have at least six thousand francs a year if she
lives in the country, and twenty thousand if she lives at Paris. These
two financial limits will suggest to you how many honest women are to
be reckoned on in the million, for they are really a mere product of
our statistical calculations.
Now three hundred thousand independent people, with an income of
fifteen thousand francs, represent the sum total of those who live on
pensions, on annuities and the interest of treasury bonds and
mortgages.
Three hundred thousand landed proprietors enjoy an income of three
thousand five hundred francs and represent all territorial wealth.
Two hundred thousand payees, at the rate of fifteen hundred francs
each, represent the distribution of public funds by the state budget,
by the budgets of the cities and departments, less the national debt,
church funds and soldier's pay, (i.e. five sous a day with allowances
for washing, weapons, victuals, clothes, etc.).
Two hundred thousand fortunes amassed in commerce, reckoning the
capital at twenty thousand francs in each case, represent all the
commercial establishments possible in France.
Here we have a million husbands represented.
But at what figure shall we count those who have an income of fifty,
of a hundred, of two, three, four, five, and six hundred francs only,
from consols or some other investment?
How many landed proprietors are there who pay taxes amounting to no
more than a hundred sous, twenty francs, one hundred francs, two
hundred, or two hundred and eighty?
At what number shall we reckon those of the governmental leeches, who
are merely quill-drivers with a salary of six hundred francs a year?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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