offer any fundamental offence to the wife; if she avoids banal
theatricals, in fact, they commonly have the effect of augmenting
the husband's devotion to her and respect for her, if only as the
fruit of comparison. The trouble with them is that very few men
among us have sense enough to manage them intelligently. The
masculine mind is readily taken in by specious values; the average
married man of Protestant Christendom, if he succumbs at all,
succumbs to some meretricious and flamboyant creature, bent only
upon fleecing him. Here is where the harsh realism of the
Frenchman shows its superiority to the sentimentality of the men of
the Teutonic races. A Frenchman would no more think of taking a
mistress without consulting his wife than he would think of standing
for office without consulting his wife. The result is that he is
seldom victimized. For one Frenchman ruined by women there are
at least a hundred Englishmen and Americans, despite the fact that a
hundred times as many Frenchmen engage in that sort of recreation.
The case of Zola is typical. As is well known, his amours were
carefully supervised by Mme. Zola from the first days of their
marriage, and inconsequence his life was wholly free from scandals
and his mind was never distracted from his work.




46.


The Eternal Romance